Happy Families Are All Alike
by Dragonjek
Summary: A dying Sarutobi sends a young Naruto away for the boy's safety; after a hard life alone, he eventually finds his way into Mahora. Negi takes his first steps towards finding his father, even as Naruto discovers that light called 'friendship' for the first time. In the calm before the storm they find happiness, unaware of the true nature of the paths they have chosen.
1. In The Spider's Web

[Comedic Disclaimer] Insert comedic disclaimer here [/Comedic Disclaimer]

The cover image is the first visual art made for this story, made by Adeshark, and set further in the story than I've actually written. You can't see the full details even if you click on the picture here, so I suggest you go to the url I put on my profile.

"Happy families are all alike; Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."  
>-Leo Tolstoy<p>

Thanks to Fenix Maelstrom for Beta-ing.

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><p><strong>Happy Families Are All Alike<strong>

**Chapter 1:**

**In the Spider's Web**

_The Anbu that led Naruto was not, the blond decided, one that he had seen before. Which was a surprise—he visited the Hokage so often that he was certain that he'd seen nearly every Anbu in the village. Naruto didn't know what animal the single horizontal line across the mask was supposed to represent, but the Anbu moved with all the lethal grace that Naruto had come to expect from the protectors of Konoha._

"_Stop." The words came quietly, absent of emotion. "The Hokage has summoned you, as I said."_

"_Huh?" Naruto looked at the older ninja beside him. "But this is the way to the Tower! I've come here a hundred times!" Naruto felt annoyance rise up in him. He had never needed to be escorted to the Hokage's Tower before! He still didn't know why the Anbu had stopped him on the way home from the Academy to take him to Jiji. He had tried to ask, but the masked shinobi had been silent. He wasn't a child anymore! He was eight, he could walk around the village by himself!_

_The Anbu nodded. "Indeed it is. However, Hokage-sama did not order for you to be brought to the Tower. We will be going to the Sarutobi household."_

"_B-but Jiji is supposed to be working today, right? I've only ever gone to his house when he's got a resting day." A frown flitted across Naruto's face before disappearing, as frowns were wont to do for the young boy. "That's great! Have you ever been there, Anbu-san? There's an entire park back there, with a swing and a slide, and this thing with ropes that makes everyone worry when I start to play with it, and this funny little boy with a scarf that tried to throw paint at this old lady, and—" _

_The Anbu suddenly stopped walking, causing Naruto to walk into him. He fell to the ground, scraping his hand. But Naruto was used to pain—the small scratch disappeared almost instantly. All that remained was a small bloody smear on his palm. _

_Naruto looked up to see the ninja looming over him. "We're here," he announced, his voice as monotone as any Aburame's._

_Naruto chuckled nervously as he stood up. The Anbu made no move to help him—something he had long gotten used to, but Anbu tended to be more helpful than most other people were. Naruto desperately tried to find something to say, to break the uncomfortable silence. "A-Anbu-san? Why didn't we use that thing, where you make us go someplace really fast, with the swirling leaves? That would have got us here sooner, right?"_

_The Anbu stared at him, his eyes seeming like two pits of black under his mask. "Correct. However, that would mean I would have had to touch you." The Anbu turned away from the child. "Go. The Hokage is expecting you." Leaves spun, and the Anbu disappeared, leaving a hurt and dejected child to trudge into the mansion of the Sarutobi._

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><p><em>It never mattered what mood Naruto was in once he entered Jiji's house. The moment he crossed the threshold into their home, he was happy. Naruto was always happy to be around people who didn't hate him, and there wasn't a soul in the huge building that wasn't at least accepting of him—Sarutobi Hiruzen made sure of that.<em>

_There was no one around as he entered the building, but that was not unusual—the Sarutobi mansion was both one of the largest buildings in Konohagakure and one of the most sparsely populated, with only six of the Sarutobi clan still alive. There were servants, of course, but they were constantly busy maintaining the house._

_This was fine with Naruto. He enjoyed the long walk to get to the occupied rooms; it gave him time to see the new growth._

_Naruto hadn't entirely understood when the old man had explained it to him, but the Sarutobi used to be close to some tree-growing people who were involved in making Konoha, and because of that they grew a lot of plants._

_He personally didn't think that made sense, but he was glad that the old people who formed the village did. The Sarutobi clan home was covered in plants, both the inside and outside. Even the unused rooms had at least half a dozen flowers or other green growing things; the rooms people stayed in had many more._

_Some were set in pots; others had been planted on the floor in special nooks made solely to hold the plant. In some places, such as the dining hall, they even grew on the walls, or upon the ceiling. Tendrils of ivy crossed many walls in the house, and sometimes one might notice that the pillar supporting the ceiling was not a carved column of wood, but the trunk of a living tree._

_Naruto stopped by the hallway that led to the clan head's rooms—those of the Hokage—to touch his absolute favorite. One day, the Sandaime had told him that he had planted the little bonsai the day Naruto had been born, and had tended to it every day. Some few inches off the soil it was planted in, the branches had been carefully cultured and shaped into a spiral—like his name._

_Naruto began his own garden that day, hidden in forest._

'Maybe I can get a bonsai of my own, too. And get a new one for every time something good happens, like making a friend, or becoming a shinobi, or… or… or… or going to Ichiraku's! Maybe Jiji could teach me how to take care of one.'

_No sooner had that thought in mind than Naruto rushed down the hall to the suite that housed the Hokage, eager to tell his closest confidante and friend his newest idea._

_He burst into the living room. "Jiji, can I have a…" Naruto's voice died off as he saw the room was empty, save for its sparse furnishings. Naruto's head tilted to the side in confusion. This had never happened before. Sarutobi was _always_ in here—every time he'd ever come to visit. Unless… maybe it was a game?_

"_If you just wanted to play a game you could have waited until I came by later today Jiji! Come on, it's boring to play hide and seek in here. We should go outside! It's a lot more fun out there." said Naruto as he began to search through the room. He looked behind couches and in closets, under pillows and beneath the couch cushions, but the Hokage was not to be found._

_Naruto was beginning to weary of the game when he heard a weak yet harsh cough. His brow furrowed as he turned towards the bedroom door—someplace he had never been into. He approached the door with some apprehension. He didn't know why, but for some reason that cough made him uneasy._

_The door creaked as he pushed it open, revealing the Hokage lying in bed. "Hello Naruto-kun." His voice hardly carried at all in the small room. It was no louder than a whisper. "I'm sorry for not meeting you earlier, but I didn't think it would take so long. How are-" Whatever Sarutobi was going to say was interrupted by a long and harsh fit of coughing._

_Naruto stood frozen by the door. He hadn't expected to see this, to see the man he held in utmost admiration lie pale on a bed. Heroes don't get sick, not like this. He did, sometimes, when it was cold and wet and the landlord wouldn't let him into the apartment. But he wasn't the Hokage yet. Jiji was, and Naruto had never seen him ill or sick or forced into bed for any reason. _

_He didn't move for a long moment, until the older man began to wheeze._

"_J-Jiji, where are Kumiko-san and Shinjiri?" Naruto's voice was shaky as he went to Sarutobi's side. "You—you need help. Why aren't you in the hospital?" _

_Sarutobi uttered a soft chuckle. "I've sent all the servants away for a time. They'll be back soon enough, but I needed to speak to you privately." The hand that waved Naruto to a seat was thin, almost clawlike. "You see, Naruto-kun, I have already been to the hospital, and I know what is wrong with me. It's nothing the medics can help with."_

_Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Sandaime Hokage of Konohagakure no Sato, the man called the God of Shinobi, spoke with a whisper._

"_I am dying."_

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><p>A raindrop fell, and Naruto awoke.<p>

The weather bordered on freezing, and the rain felt like ice, but Naruto much preferred the stinging rain to the dreams.

He felt relieved that he had woken up then. Remembering was painful, but the dreams always got worse after that part—when they turned into nightmares.

Tanzaku wasn't as loud as most cities its size were. Naruto always thought that the mornings here were quieter than they had been back in Konoha. It was something he enjoyed—when it was soft and silent and the light fog that covered the city in the morning made everything dull and muted, sometimes he could just pretend the past few years had never happened. It felt comforting.

But today wasn't such a day. It was clear, save for the rain, and the visit of the Daimyo to the city had resulted in the whole place bustling more than it normally would when the sun had hardly peeked over the horizon.

Naruto dug around in his pockets to find any ryo he could use to buy some food at the grocers. The pants he wore had once been blue and orange, the most vibrant and eye-catching colors he could find. But after only wearing these for so long, all one could see was brown. He felt lucky he had bought these back in Konoha—clothes in ninja villages were far more durable than the stuff he had found here, even if they were too small for him.

"Blondie! I 'aven't seen ya 'round 'ere for awhile. Come ta' sell me sumthin' again?" The laughter that followed was louder and heartier than anything Naruto had ever managed. "I ain't been a lookin' forward ta' tha shite 'dem otha rats been a bringin' in. Ya' always get some good stuff, yah?

The accent on the voice was heavy enough that the words were hardly recognizable, but Naruto couldn't help but be glad to hear the voice, low on money as he was. He didn't know the shopkeeper's name, but she ran a pawn shop, selling virtually anything. The old lady was from some place up north, with a name he couldn't pronounce, but she was something of a godsend to the boy.

The wide smile Naruto wore so often fell slightly as he went under the awning to her shop. "Not so good this time, baa-san. I found a lot, but I don't think much of the stuff could be salvageable enough to sell." There weren't many ways to get money in Tanzaku, unless you already had some. The shopowner would buy the stuff the poor people in the sector scrounged up, repair it so it at least looked usable, and then pawn it off to her customers. She didn't cheat Naruto as badly as she could have, either.

She frowned at Naruto's words. The wrinkles on her face looked like a fish net when she did that. "Well, show me tha stuff, boy. I ain't got much longa' till I'z open, and I ain't a keepin' tha customas waitin, not fuh' a li'l rat like ya' be. But I won' pay much for it, iffen it ain't good."

It took Naruto a moment to figure out what she was saying—even after having gone to her for a long time, he still found it difficult to tell what she was saying through that truly agonizing brogue. But once he did, he bolted off.

Naruto stashed everything he owned in an old abandoned building several blocks down. It was just a small house, and the roof was missing, but it served well enough as a place to stay. He didn't know why it hadn't been torn down, or why no one else had decided to sleep in there like he had—it had a bed, if a rather tattered one, and it was at least a house of some sort—but apparently no one had even gone inside but him for years.

The front door was broken, and Naruto had been afraid that if he tried to open it the bottom half that remained would fall apart. The floor groaned under his feet as he vaulted over the entryway, but apart from that his landing made only the slightest sound. Even so, he flinched at the complaints of the wood beneath his feet. Noise seemed out of place here, in the empty and broken place.

The cabinets didn't creak as he opened them—they were probably the only part of the house that wouldn't. Inside were four bags—very nearly the sum of Uzumaki Naruto's worldly belongings.

A fair portion of what Naruto found when scavenging were too large to be put in the bags, which meant that most of what he would sell to the old shopkeeper were piled up in the living room, beside a wheelbarrow. But in the bags he kept some of the smaller, more valuable items. The small locket made of brass that was thrown away because of a crack. The pitted, rusted, and dented shuriken and kunai that would never be combat worthy, but could still be sold as a curio for the many shinobi enthusiasts in Tanzaku. A wedding ring, the gem plucked out. A small, elaborate snuffbox with a bloodstain on the corner, and a dozen other such small treasures.

He took these from the bag to carry them out to the wheelbarrow. These were followed by the larger items—a somewhat torn blanket that could be sown up and a chair with a broken leg. Naruto felt worried as he looked at what he had to sell. It was less than he usually brought her, and he didn't know if it would be enough to get money for food for the next week.

After tossing a cover over the wheelbarrow to protect it from the rain, he pushed his small cart into the street.

'_What's with all the people this morning?_' Naruto thought to himself. He knew that the Daimyo was coming, and it had been more active earlier, but the roads were almost as full as they would normally be later in the day.

Throughout his life in Konohagakure, Naruto had come to be supremely skilled at ignoring the speech of others—whenever he had passed by, a great many of the comments he heard were about him, and they were never worth listening too. It was a skill he had not lost after leaving his home.

"Have you heard?" the whispers said, as people spoke on the streets and in the stores and in the houses. "The Godaime Hokage is coming to here!"

"Danzō-sama is coming Tanzaku!"

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><p>While it was true that Naruto was no longer in the Academy, his desire to become a shinobi had only grown after the dying Hokage had told him about his family. While he might not have a teacher to show him how to perform jutsu, or how to improve his chakra control, or teach him taijutsu, or… well, teach him how to do most of what a ninja ought to do, Naruto refused to let that get in his way.<p>

Panting, Naruto sunk to his knees in the forest clearing he had chosen for his training. The thick tree trunk before him showed the abuse of the past few years of Naruto's 'sparring' against it, and the blood covering his knuckles and the tree's remaining bark proved that the tree hadn't taken it's beating quietly.

Naruto looked away from his hands as the split knuckles slowly closed themselves. He hated to watch it—to see that damned fox _touching_ his body. He didn't care that it was helping him. Everything was its fault! Leaving Konoha, Jiji's death, being stuck in a filthy abandoned house, the—

Naruto shook his head, hard enough that his hair stung his face. He knew that it liked it when he got angry at it. It had told him so, in the dreams.

Naruto fell to his side as his stomach began to ache—that faint burning feeling enough for him to tell that it was the Kyuubi's reminder and reprimand, rather than his empty belly. The feeling passed quickly enough—it must not have been angry, but the pain had been enough to leave an acrid taste in the back of Naruto's mouth from barely restrained bile.

If Naruto's knees were shaking from the fox's reminder of its existence, they had stopped by the time the boy dragged himself to his feet. He winced from the ache that covered his body.

'_Maybe I should skip the rest of the physical stuff,' _he thought as he rubbed his shoulders. Maybe he had twisted something when he fell? It didn't matter if he had, for something so small would be fixed shortly. Even so, he didn't think pushing harder would help now. _'Which would mean… ugh, chakra training._'

Naruto stood on his toes to reach the lowest branches of the nearest tree. Even though they were much smaller than those of Konoha, he was still in Hi no Kuni, and there was no such thing as a tiny tree in that country. But the branches were laden with fruit (nasty, dry, and poisonous. He had only tried those once.), and it was easy enough to pull one of the triangular leaves free.

Naruto sat down in the dirt and placed the leaf on his forehead. He leaned his head back—he was certain if he was like that cute pink-headed girl a couples years ahead of him in school, something-or-other Sakura, he wouldn't have to take this awkward pose to keep it on his head, but he needed it to sit for a moment until he could grab it with chakra.

Naruto's legs were crossed, and his hands rested upon his knees in a pose he was certain he had seen Jiji in a few times, when he had been meditating. Naruto still didn't see the point of staying still for _hours_ at a time like the Hokage could, but he thought it made him look very cool and wise when he sat like that.

His eyes were closed as he reached within himself, reaching out for his chakra. Naruto had figured out that if he tried to reach for his chakra fast, he could get it easily, but it was harder if he slowly tried to grab it and draw it forth. Being Naruto, he of course tried the harder path. He figured it was like some types of exercises, which were much harder to do slowly, but also gave more improvement.

The odd, slightly pleasurable tingling sensation in his body heralded the chakras coming. Naruto gasped as the leaf on Naruto's head began to shake. '_Shit! That's too much.'_ His brow furrowed as he focused on reducing the amount of chakra, incidentally making his work more difficult by reducing the area that the leaf could cling to.

Even so, it took only a moment until the leaf was firmly stuck to Naruto's forehead. He sighed at how easy it was becoming.

Naruto knew that it was important to have good control, but the only chakra control exercise he knew was leaf-floating exercise he had learned in the Academy. Oh, it had been hard for him—he hadn't managed to do it with any regularity for a long time—but once he had figured it out it wasn't very difficult at all to do it every time. Maybe his chakra surged sometimes, like it did today, but he was learning to manage that fairly well.

However, with only that training technique there was no way his control would get any better! The leaf was still stuck to Naruto's hand has he punched the tree, splitting his knuckles again. '_This is so slow! I hardly get better at all, doing just this exercise over and over and over and… Stupid leaves! Stupid, stupid leaves! I'll be old before I'm as good as a shinobi. Like, twenty, or something.'_ Still trying to vent his anger on the poor, abused tree, he pulled back his arm to punch the tree again—teach it a good lesson, he would, about how it shouldn't be near angry venting demon hosts—when he noticed something.

His hand wouldn't let go of the tree. Naruto was so shocked at this that the almost offhand concentration he was using to attach the leaf to his head vanished—and his fist left the tree's trunk as the small flit of green fell to the ground.

Naruto stared at the tree as though it were a holy blessing. This-this was it! This is what he would do for training!

The revelation that he could actually make _himself_ stick to objects completely overshadowed the idea that he could make things that weren't leaves attach to himself, but the thought was there (both of these discoveries were things that almost every other shinobi his age—or younger—had figured out rather shortly. How he had missed the ability to stick to walls when Umino Iruka had introduced himself to the class while standing on the ceiling is a mystery). After so very long, he had finally discovered a new way to train his chakra.

"YES!" Naruto leapt into the air as he screamed out his joy. "I did it! I know what to do now, oh yes." Naruto laughed as he pointed to the tree, his pose challenging and cocky. "I'm going to become a ninja, and there's no way a tree like you will get in the way!"

His asinine challenge proclaimed, he charged at the great wooden pillar, his chakra gathering in his feet as he jumped at the flimsy bit of kindling that thought it could block the success of Uzumaki Naruto. Naruto spun in the air, placing his feet before him as he touched the tree—

And fell on his ass.

The tree stood tall, the victor at last, as Naruto moaned on the ground.

* * *

><p>Twilight was just beginning to arrive as Naruto approached at the eastern gates to the city. He was more thankful than ever that the Sandaime had given him a scroll full of what he had thought Naruto would need before the disaster. If he had been seen with kunai and shuriken here, with all the business about the Daimyo, he probably would have been thrown in prison!<p>

Naruto's eyes narrowed as he glared at the other people lined up to enter the city. With that thought in mind, he couldn't help but wonder if that old silver-haired man with one eye over there was actually an assassin, come to kill the daimyo. Or was the pretty blond lady with the lazy-looking fellow actually a missing-nin, come to kill everyone in their sleep? Or maybe that big fat guy was going to poison the city so he could eat all their food? Naruto thought the last was likely. He didn't like the way the chubby guy was eating those chips.

Although… Naruto glanced around as he looked at all the people. He hadn't noticed this before, but there were never this many people waiting to go in the city, not so close to nightfall. Standing in line was something he hadn't had to do in ages. He turned to a stupid-looking teen with a dog, just a few steps behind him.

"Hey, dog-breath! What's with all the people?" Naruto asked, as polite as only he could be.

The older boy's eye twitched as he looked down on the short blond. "Wanna' say that again, runt?" Naruto couldn't help but step back as he saw that the wild-looking dog-owner's eyes were slitted, and couldn't help but notice the abnormally sharp teeth in the boy's mouth.

Naruto felt a touch of panic as he looked into the curiously familiar face. '_I-is this guy even human? Is he another demon container or something? He looks less like a human that I do!'_ Naruto's mind raced as he stared at the other, and his breath came shorter and harsher as the older boy sneered at him. The crowd started to back away from them, not eager to be caught in any sort of conflict.

"Shut it, Kiba!" A loud voice cried out from about ten feet down the line. "Give the kid a break already. He looks half-starved." The blond lady he noticed earlier stalked back up the line, dragging the sleepy teen with her. Once she got up to him, she raised her hand and slapped the dog-boy—Kiba—upside the head. Naruto flinched at the hand, and couldn't help but be relieved that he wasn't the one getting slapped. It had happened enough times, after all.

She turned to him and smiled. "Sorry about him. He's always been an idiot."

The rapid beating of Naruto's heart didn't stop. These people—he recognized them, he knew he did. But from where? "M-maybe he needs a leash?" Naruto ventured, no longer interested in why there was a line. He just wanted to find a way to get the conversation to end, and quickly. They made him nervous.

The blond girl's laughter overrode Kiba's growl. The lazy boy sighed and muttered something under his breath before addressing Naruto. "Look kid—Ino, stop laughing, you'll annoy Kiba even more." He slid his hands through his hair as he looked up at the sky. "He's troublesome enough as it is. Last thing we need is for it to be even worse."

He ignored the outraged shouts of the two louder teens as he continued speaking to Naruto. "Will you go away if I tell you? No offense kid, but Kiba'll only get madder if you stay around, and Ino seems to like you, which probably means you'll be as bad as she is."

Naruto couldn't help but frown at that. He was never annoying! He hadn't ever been, ever, even when he was begging the Hokage to do his homework for him. But still… Naruto nodded.

Another sigh slipped from the lean-faced guy. "Well, it's like this—with everything involving the Daimyo visiting, there'd be more people coming anyway. However—" Naruto couldn't help but be amazed at how utterly uninterested and dull the boy's voice was as he explained what was happening. It sounded like he was sighing and speaking and sleeping, all at the same time.

He started to doze off as the guy spoke, but a piece of a sentence caught his attention.

"—so with the Hokage coming as well—"

When Naruto thought of the Hokage, he remembered the calming smell of the Sandaime's pipe, the feel of flower petals against his palm, and the warmth of being wrapped up in blankets, sleeping in the office while Jiji hummed and stamped papers. As such, it took him a moment to remember what the realities of the situation were.

"Th-the Godaime is coming here?!" Naruto shouted. They had gotten closer to the front of the line by then, and were again surrounded by people. It was late, and most of them were in no mood for shouting. Annoyed mutters passed through the line, but Naruto paid them no heed.

'_Danzō… he can't be here. He can't! I left! Danzō's the Hokage—Daimyo go to the Kage, not the other way around. He shouldn't be here!"_ Naruto felt panic well up in him, harder and stronger than before, but he squelched it.

He wanted to run away from here, to get back to the abandoned house and hide and pretend the world didn't exist. But he knew he couldn't run, not now. He had recognized them—or at least the dog boy. The boy was an Inuzuka, he knew it. He might not be wearing a hitai-ate, but all of the Inuzuka trained to be ninja. Every last one.

And Naruto knew, where there was one ninja, there were more. The people he was talking to were probably shinobi as well. He might have even seen them at school. '_If I run, they'll get suspicious, I know it! Damn it… I don't want to be here. Not if they're from Konoha._' He couldn't wait until they got to the end of the line.

"Yeah. I didn't catch it all, but it's something involving trade agreements, and a meeting with some of the lesser village leaders."

Naruto nodded, remembering that he had promised to leave once the lazy boy had finished. A wide, cheerful smile crossed Naruto's face as he grinned at the three. He was always good at making himself smile when he had to. "I'll have to remember that when I get back home. I bet Baa-san will want to hear about that, if there's going to be more customers. Thank you for explaining that, uh—."

"Shikamaru."

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, Shimakaru." Shikamaru shook his head at the misspelling, muttering about troublesome children under his breath.

Naruto noticed that they were only steps away from entering Tanzaku, and had to hide his sigh of relief. "Well, I have to go now. It looks like the line ended, so I got to get home"

If Naruto was walking away a bit faster than normal, it would probably be blamed on an eagerness to get home.

But they weren't quite done with him yet.

"Hey, kid!" Ino called out, waving her hand to get his attention as he started leaving. "We're new here, so could you help us out?"

Naruto was glad his face was turned away from them, because he couldn't hide the grimace that crossed his face. Just when he was about to get away…

He didn't know what they wanted, but it would only take a moment, then they would leave. He spun on his foot, and jogged to the group, which had gotten a few more additions, raising their number to six—a cute brunette and a guy in a trenchcoat we're standing there as well, and the fat guy had joined them.

"We're looking for a friend of ours. He's just a few years younger than us, and he's never been very tall." Naruto couldn't help but have feeling of foreboding as she spoke, a shiver running down his spine as she continued.

"He's got messy blond hair, and blue eyes. He managed to convince someone to give him some tattoos that look like whiskers just last year, and he's always very loud." Ino was about to continue, but turned and nudged the shy-looking girl with funny eyes—a Hyūga, Naruto thought. "Hey, Hinata, what was his name again? It's been so long since we've seen him, I can hardly remember it."

"W-w-w-well, I-Ino, you shouldn't f-forget things like that. I-i-it's important to remember p-people's names, e-especially friends. I d-don't think h-he would like to know you d-don't remember him, and—"

Naruto didn't listen to the rest of the stuttering Hyūga's words. He was too busy panicking and holding back cold shivers as they described him.

'_Wh-what? I don't remember them—I have to run! Damn it, they're shinobi! Full fledged ninja, I'm going to die! I'm—wait. How didn't they notice me?'_

Naruto had never known that he displayed the patience and self-control he displayed at that moment. Rather than running and screaming, like he dearly wanted to, he managed—through what must have been a miracle—to keep his face relatively calm as he tried to think about how they didn't recognize him. He was lucky that they thought he was trying to remember who the person they were describing was, or they might have suspected the movement on his face for what it was.

He couldn't figure it out, which worried him. He would spend many days trying to figure out why they couldn't tell it was him, and never once did he consider that he had completely forgotten to remove the Henge he was practicing with when he decided to go back to the city.

A small cough from the dark-haired Hyūga girl reminded him that they were waiting on his response. But he didn't know what to say. They were looking for him, and it's not like he could—

Naruto had to restrain the smirk that threatened to show itself. He was going to leave town now anyways, so why not tell the truth?

"Do you mean Uzumaki Naruto? Who lives in that creepy house?" It hadn't escaped his notice that they had not actually mentioned the name they were looking for, even when Hinata was pretending to scold Ino for not remembering.

Naruto was surprised by how quickly Ino was in front of him, leaning down to give him that perky smile. "You mean you know him? Honestly, I thought we'd have to look around forever, and that would be so boring, don't you think?" She reached out to put a hand on Naruto's shoulder, but stopped as he shied away from the touch.

"It's just a bruise. But yeah, if you didn't know where he goes it would be impossible to find him for an ordinary person." Naruto forced himself to chuckle, something not particularly hard for him. He had done it all the time at the Academy, while the classes laughed. "He spends a lot of time digging through people's junk, and he pawns it off at this old lady's shop a bit behind the market area, where it's always shady."

Naruto paused. "Do you need directions to get there?" When the Konoha shinobi shook their heads, he continued. "I heard that he keeps getting in fights with some of the gangs that hang out back there. It's… well, it's not a nice place." He looked down as he said this. Naruto had got in some fights with them, and it the result had not been as fun for him as he had thought it would. He had felt his lack of a teacher keenly the first time he had tried to fight one of the gang members—connected to some guy named Gato, or something like that. It had hurt. A lot.

But he did better in the fights after that. Maybe he didn't have anyone to learn taijutsu from, but at least he could get stronger at fighting from that experience.

Naruto looked up at Ino. "I-I'm sorry. I shouldn't have kept you so long."

Her hair blew from side to side as she shook her head. "You weren't keeping us from anything. We were going to go to a hotel tonight, but I suppose we ought to go check Naruto-kun out first. Cheeky brat… he shouldn't be doing anything dangerous like that."

Naruto was impressed. She had a concerned look in her eyes, and with the worry in her voice he might have even thought she knew him. She must have done very well at the Academy. "Thank you for the help, bōzu. Do you need us to help you get home? It's a bit late for you to go home by yourself, don't you think?"

Naruto could see the false concern in her eyes change slightly into something more real. He was touched that she was worried about him, but he had more trouble keeping himself from laughing. He remembered Iruka-sensei had said there was a word to describe situations like this. Something involving metal. Coppery? Tin-y? No, irony, that was it.

"I live really close." Naruto pointed, truthfully, towards where the house he stayed at was. "Just over there."

Extricating himself from the group was not, as it turned out, so easy as giving an excuse. As it turned out, he had to give a round of farewells to everyone in the group, even those he hadn't talked to, and a set of introductions got passed around (he made up his own, of course. Although he didn't know why they flinched when he called himself 'Gaara').

But eventually he did manage to pull himself free of the disguised Konoha shinobi. As soon as they were out of sight, he began to run as fast as he could towards the northern gate, his Henge slipping as he left. He had his scroll—that had everything that was truly important. He was disappointed that he had to leave the rest of it—some money would be nice, and there was a half a bag of stale bread back home that he hadn't eaten yet. But he couldn't stay. Not here, when Danzō was coming. That had been the last warning Sarutobi had given him—to stay away from Root at all costs. It had been why the Hokage had told him about the secret escape route hidden in the Hokage monument.

Naruto had always been good at being sneaking. Even when he was back in Konoha, he could hide from some of the ninjas—the games of hide and seek with the Hokage doubtlessly helped with that. Living where he did, in one of the worse parts of Tanzaku, one of the worst cities in the country, meant that those skills hadn't degraded very much at all. The guard at the gate didn't even notice him slip away.

But a man hidden in the shadows above the gate did. Adjusting his white mask, he darted away—in a different direction than Naruto. No, he left to retrieve the others who were looking over the other gates, waiting for this moment.

For Danzō was already in Tanzaku, waiting for the fly to escape his web.

* * *

><p>They were so close. Naruto didn't know if he'd be able to escape them this time.<p>

The blond demon host ducked behind a brush, kneeling to rest for a moment. The Anbu—or perhaps Root, he didn't know—had started chasing him all too soon after he had left the city. Perhaps he had some advantages in the run—he knew the area, and had better senses at night than they did, but they were the elite of Konohagakure.

One does not simply outrun the Anbu. But Naruto couldn't afford not to.

When he had stopped his legs had felt like molten lead and his chest had been heaving for lack of air, but only a couple minutes of rest were enough for him to get his wind back. Naruto wasn't easily exhausted, and when he was he came back as quick as his demon could make him. He could run at full speed longer than the Anbu could—they had to pace themselves. It was the only reason they hadn't caught him yet.

He pushed himself to his feet and dashed forwards. Naruto didn't know where he was going. He didn't think he was going north anymore, but he knew he was still headed away from Tanzaku. The trees were starting to thin out—he knew Tanzaku was fairly close to the border, but he didn't think a single night's run would be enough to get him so close to leaving the country.

Naruto had no illusions that he would be safe by leaving—under the militant Danzō, the borders were often pushed, and he had heard that the other villages had been considering retaliation. They'd just cross the border and drag him back if he did that.

Naruto his legs begin to burn again, but he refused to rest so soon after taking a break. Even he couldn't run all night like this without repercussions. He had no idea how the Anbu were keeping up—he supposed they might be taking soldier pills, but he didn't know they would let them run for so long. Maybe they had a healer with them.

A low-lying tree branch nearly felled him, but Naruto rolled under it, receiving whip-like slash marks across his face for the effort. The springy trees here made running painful, but he far preferred them to the larger trees one found elsewhere, at least in this case. The Anbu would be able to go much faster if they could run in the trees, and he wasn't skilled enough at tree running to outpace them.

Disaster struck as the land began to turn rugged and rocky, and not from the many stones Naruto had taken care to avoid.

He felt it—the ripping sensation of torn muscles in his leg briefly before the limb stopped supporting his weight. Had he succeeded in losing his pursuers, his hoarse scream would have drawn them—it was long, and pained, and full of despair.

The Anbu arrived to find Naruto trying to pull himself towards a nearby spring. A streak of blood drew a path from where Naruto fell to his prone form, where his skin had torn on the rocks. Had he known how to put chakra into his limbs, he might have outrun them—alas, all he had was the fox's improvements to his body.

One of the shinobi stepped forwards. "Enough, Uzumaki. You cannot escape now. Lie still; you're capture is assured, and further struggle will only result in pain." Naruto ignored her in favor of dragging himself closer to the water's edge, blood staining the ground about him. The Anbu supposed he must have cut something important on the rocks, but it hardly mattered. He'd get better.

The Anbu continued to speak, although she signaled one of her companions to retrieve the boy. "Hokage-sama has ordered you to be captured by any means necessary, and we knew your ability to heal will ensure your survival." She shook her head. "You have dodged your service to your village and people far too long, Uzumaki. Your time in Root is about to commence."

She turned to another of her team, shorter than the others. "Return to Tanzaku, and inform Hokage-sama that we have successfully retrieved our target. We will require means of containing him upon our arrival."

As the smaller Anbu disappeared into the night, the woman—apparently the leader—turned to the injured form of Naruto. The Anbu had bound him in rope, to make him easier to transport. "Well done, Nezumi. Now, I will place the suppressant seal on it, and we will immediately return to—damn!"

The Anbu swore as Naruto rolled himself into the spring. "Pull it out! Bound like that, it'll drown. Probably what the treacherous little monster wants."

However, the water was perfectly clear and absent of Naruto—too clear, in fact, although neither ninja knew enough about water to know that. Had they possessed more demonic power than they had, they would have seen more.

They would have seen themselves reflected, as perfectly and clearly as a mirror, even while simultaneously being able to see the bottom of the spring as though the water wasn't even there. As it was, they could not see this, nor could they see the dancing images under the water's surface, showing images of places they had never seen.

Images and pictures flickered throughout the spring, impairing vision not in the least. They showed pictures of places throughout their world—of villages nestled in high mountain peaks, hidden in eternal desert winds, buried away within the mountains. But it showed so much more than that.

For the images that floated throughout these most perfect of waters were not limited only to the world inhabited by the shinobi. The images showed the homes of demons, in a world that had never seen a human step foot upon it. They showed a world, full of wonders and horrors, known to some as the Mundus Magicus.

And they showed images of another world. In this world was a school. There were a great many things in this school—students and teachers, mages and warriors, humans and others—but what stuck out the most in this school would be its tree, the World Tree.

The World Tree was a wondrous being. It had lived far longer than any other tree that had a physical existence, and it was one of the largest living beings to exist in any of the infinite realms of what exists, and what does not. It was one of the most concentrated forces of magical power in all the world, and it stood upon a nexus of the planet's ley lines. Indeed, it was even sentient, in the manner of trees, uncaring about individuals and the passing of eons as it watched life.

But at that moment in time, perhaps the most remarkable thing about the tree would be the boy now hidden away in a small pool of water in its boughs.

Uzumaki Naruto had come to Earth.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>

Thank you so much for reading!

(Thanks to Evangeline for having such a great, title-worthy quote! And to Leo Tolstoy for writing Anna Karenina in the first place. Also, have you seen the new compiled translations for Negima (the Negima Omnibus)? They messed up the word order for the quote.)

Although this story may wander into the dark and depressing, I am a firm believer in the light that shines brightest when surrounded by darkness. Unpleasantness in a narrative must be balanced out… eventually. This story is rated M for occasional swearing, sexual undertones (and overtones), violence, nightmares, and the Kyuubi no Youko.


	2. And Nothing but the Truth

Wow… I can't believe so many people read this—so many! I really appreciate this.

Special thanks to everyone who reviewed my story! I'm glad for your input.

* * *

><p><strong>Disclaimer:<strong>

I own neither Naruto nor Negima! Magister Negi Magi/Mahou Sensei Negima (take your pick of the name). These are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and Ken Akamatsu, respectively. Likewise, I do not possess any characters from other stories or other mediums of storytelling that may or may not be referenced in this fictional piece.

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><p><strong>Chapter 2:<strong>

**And Nothing but the Truth**

Takahata Takamichi nodded his thanks to Yotsuba Satsuki as he took the steaming cup from her hands. After that mission in South Africa he was glad to be back here—Satsuki made sure that Chao Bao Zi always had a relaxing air about it. It was just what he needed after breaking up a magically-assisted drug cartel.

Sipping his tea, he gave his surroundings a surreptitious glance. Seeing no one looking his way, he pulled out a small slip of paper and tore it in two. Nobody saw the laptop computer suddenly appearing at his table, save for Seruhiku. Said sensei only shook his head at Takahata's boldness before continuing his conversation with Nitta.

Takahata wasn't surprised to see his email immediately start bouncing around the screen before he even thought about checking it. The computer had been doing that ever since he had hooked it up to connect to the magical aspect of the internet. He knew he ought to get it fixed, but he found his computer's new precognitive abilities to be rather funny—and definitely useful.

'_Although'_ he thought as he began looking through the email he had gotten over the past few days, '_it might be better to have Nijuin-kun look it over. He might not be the most powerful mage around, but he knows computer magic well—almost as well as he knows teaching._' Magical computer viruses could be nasty.

That line of thought disappeared quickly after he started to read the email Negi had sent him while he was away. So did the tea in his mouth, spraying from his lips in shock as he read the very first line of the email.

-Takamichi! I beat Evangaline-san!—

Takahata read through the message with growing disbelief. He knew Evangeline liked to play around rather than finish things quickly, but to believe she had actually lost! Pride welled up in him as he read Negi's description of the fight. To survive against Evangeline (Dark Evangeline, of all people!) until the wards over the school restored themselves was an impressive feat for anyone, especially for someone like Negi, who had no real combat training.

'_It really is a pity,_' Takahata mused, '_that I can't be the one to teach him how to fight. He wouldn't be able to learn my fighting style, and as for the magic…_'

It had been a long time since he had regretted not being able to cast spells—he had grown past the point where it made a difference. But he would have liked to teach Negi something, to see him improve as a student.

'_I suppose it will have to be enough to watch him as his friend, then._' He closed his eyes as he finished sending his reply. Negi's message had been full of stories about his interactions with his class, ending with a request to meet up with Takahata for tea—which he accepted, of course. _'Although being his friend is more than satisfying in and of itself._'

A quiet ping caused Takahata to open his eyes again. He had a new email. He reached out to bring it up, but his computer had already gone to the message by the time he touched it. It was from the Headmaster.

-Takamichi-kun! I know you have only just returned, but I need you to do something for me. Evangeline came into my office a short while ago to tell me that she felt someone—or something—enter the school grounds. This was several days ago, shortly after her fight with Negi-kun.—

Takahata frowned at that. She should have said something much earlier. Although, he had to admit to himself, if she was sick again she wouldn't have been able to visit the Headmaster. He supposed that Evangeline's pride had probably prevented her from sending Chachamaru in her place.

How a high daylight walker, the most elite of the vampire castes, could fall ill so frequently was beyond him.

-The problem is that we don't know where this being is located. Even with Evangeline connected to the barrier around the school, she can't feel where he is—she described it as being 'fuzzy'. He may be using magic to confuse the barrier, but so far as I know no such spell exists.—

If the Headmaster said that, then Takahata was willing to accept that as fact. That old man might look odd, but he could cast more spells than Takahata even knew existed. And that was only a fraction of the spells that the Headmaster knew about, but hadn't learned. There was a reason he was the leader of one of the most magical locations on Mundus Vetus.

-I need you to find whatever it was that came through the barrier. I've enchanted this message to forward itself to the other teachers once it arrives to you. Be warned, however; Evangeline has described the intruder as being alternatively weak, and as being unbearably powerful. Neither of us know why that is, but dshjkl;kjjjb

-The old man was taking too long. Go find whatever the hell it was! Now!—

Takahata sweatdropped as he read what he could only assume was Evangeline taking over from the Headmaster. He knew the old man liked to dodder about and take matters at his own pace, but did she really need to attack a senior citizen like that?

"Sorry, Sat-chan," he said to his former student, who had come over to clean up the spill. "The Headmaster needs me to do something for him. I know it's unlike me to just get a drink and leave, but—."

Satsuki just smiled at him. It's not a problem at all, she said in her unusual yet soothing way of speaking. Not everything can wait. We'll still be here when you finish. He didn't often have to leave before talking with the chefs of Chao Bao Zi, but he was glad Satsuki took it with the same calm kindness that she did everything else.

Takahata expressed his thanks before striding away from the restaurant. Even if the Headmaster didn't know where the intruder was, there were only so many places he—or to be fair, she or it—could hide. It hadn't been noticed yet, but if it intended to harm the students… He was glad that there wasn't much traffic in this street—once he was out of sight, he would be able to take to the roofs for much faster movement.

He hadn't gone more than a block before he heard something. His hands darted into his pockets as he turned towards the nearby alley, the origin of the sound. For someone else, it would be a relaxed pose, but no one who had ever seen him in battle would make that mistake. Takahata had assumed the intruder would be more subtle than to come so close to the civilians. If there was going to be a fight, it would be best to finish it quickly before they got caught in the crossfire.

A can rolled down the alley to stop at Takahata's feet, prompting him to gawk at it. That… hadn't been what he had expected. A quiet groaning sound rolled from the passage, drawing Takahata's attention. Two small and incredibly dirty legs stuck out from a dumpster, betraying the presence of the child digging through it.

"Mind telling me what you're doing? I imagine it doesn't smell too good in there." Takahata said as he stepped into the alley.

Takahata couldn't help but feel anger stir as he saw what darted out of the garbage. This was not at all what he had expected to find.

The blond boy was dirty, smelly, and far thinner than any child ought to be. That applied doubly here in Mahora. There were programs so that anyone without a home would have someplace to stay until they got on their feet—the seemingly endless supply of money supporting Mahora ensured that. Homeless or starving people were supposed to receive help immediately, even more so if they were a child!

The intruder would have to wait; the child was more important. If the trespasser was going to attack, he would have already. There wasn't even an argument in his mind about which held priority.

He was glad that the stance he had entered to fight didn't look like one. Looking threatening wasn't the best thing to do with homeless, starving children. He took a step into the alley. "If you're looking for food, I have to say Chao Bao Zi's would taste far better than this." He tried to keep his voice soft so as not to startle the kid into running. He only had to get the boy to the restaurant—Serihiko or Nitta would be able to take care of the kid then. Another slow step into the alley. The child's eyes were startlingly blue, but the fearful look in them detracted from their attractiveness.

Those eyes held stories that Takahata didn't think he wanted to hear. He would have to find out from the other teachers how the kid had come to this in Mahora, of all places. He carefully stepped closer to the child. "I can give you the money to eat there, if you—"

Takahata thought he had been walking slowly enough that the boy wouldn't notice, but he had. The dirty child suddenly bolted.

He was surprised at how fast the kid was going. He hadn't sense magic or chi at all, but that speed was definitely faster than any normal human his age could move. No magic, no chi-this child was obviously the intruder. But he was still a child… he hoped the Headmaster would find a way to sort this out.

The boy was fast, but only compared to a normal human. Takahata was many things, but he could never be described as normal.

Takahata overtook the boy before he had gone more than a short distance. "So you're the one who crossed the barrier. I'm sorry, but you need to come with me to see the Headmaster." Takahata kept his voice calm, but it took on a firmness that had not been there before. "We need to speak with you about how you entered Mahora."

While he had been speaking, the boy had brought his hands together before him. Takahata wasn't too worried—he still didn't feel any magical power or chi coming from the boy. Even if he had confused the detections in the barrier Evangeline was bound too, magic or chi was still required to do anything that might be dangerous.

This notion—one taught to him by some of the most powerful and knowledgeable people in the Magical World—was suddenly wildly disabused as the child before him spoke for the first time since Takahata had found him.

"_Oiroke no Jutsu_!"

Takahata had been a teacher at the all-girls school in Mahora for a long time, and as such was not afflicted by the crippling nosebleed that usually felled the victims of the technique. Nevertheless, he was stunned long enough for the child to run off again.

He could scarcely accept what he had just seen. He supposed it was similar to what ordinary humans felt when they first saw magic. It was impossible—utterly impossible—to transform or make an illusion without using either of the two powers. Even shapeshifters emitted a tiny bit of magic when changing form, and the demonic powers were similar enough in form that the resonance could be felt by anyone sensitive to magic.

By the time Takahata got over his shock, the boy had already fled down the street. He sighed, and raised a hand to rub the back of his head. That had been a good move, he had to admit. He hadn't thought he would ever have to do this to catch up to a child. But if the kid could become a smoke-clad naked girl, he could probably become someone else too. And with him about to run into the crowd, he'd never be able to find him, even with the smoke produced by that technique as a give-away.

A _Shundo_ and a quick, almost painless strike to a nerve cluster later, and the boy had collapsed in his arms.

This boy would cause a great deal of paperwork for the Headmaster, Takahata was sure of it.

* * *

><p>"My Lord Orochimaru is most upset, Danzō-sama."<p>

The man who had become the Godaime Hokage showed no signs of hearing the words of Orochimaru's lackey. His one-eyed gaze was focused forwards, on the spectacle before him.

"My lord returned to Konohagakure, and has abided by your edict not to perform experiments on the villagers, under the assumption that he would be permitted to experiment upon the Kyuubi container before it was placed under Root." The silver-haired shinobi from Oto pushed his glasses higher up his face, although they sunk down again almost immediately. Light flashed from the lenses into Danzō's single eye. "Denied the jinchuuriki, why, I don't know what Orochimaru-sama will do."

"Since when, Kabuto-san," Shimura Danzō asked, "Have you not been able to read your master's intentions and desires like an open book?" Despite addressing Kabuto, Danzō did not turn his head, nor change position in any way.

Kabuto laughed. "I am humbled by your praise, Danzō-sama. But I am not so skilled at reading my lord's mind as you seem to think."

Danzō spoke with the same grave seriousness he had used in every conversation he took part in since he lost his eye. "I highly doubt that. Even so, it makes no difference. After leaving Akatsuki as violently as he did, neither Orochimaru nor Otogakure can afford to be without the support of Konoha."

Kabuto paled. "H-how did—"

"How did I find out?" Danzō laughed, although there was nothing resembling humor in the sound. "The organization has not been made, even one formed with a foundation of S-ranked shinobi, that is immune to the infiltrations of Root. I have long known of Orochimaru's connections to Oto."

Kabuto shivered. He knew that Danzō would have discovered the link between Orochimaru and his project village, but to think that Danzō had been able to spy upon even the Akatsuki… Root was fearsome indeed. It was even more so now, when it had formally merged with Konoha's Anbu forces, with the full force of the village behind it. He would need to check over Orochimaru-sama's people at the lairs again. Danzō had no doubt placed new agents since his last inspection.

"Even so, do not think that Orochimaru-sama will take this insult silently. He may need you, but he can still work against you in more subtle—and more dangerous—ways than open rebellion." Open threats were not typically the best way to conduct negations—particularly when speaking with one who held as much power as Danzō. Even so, conversations between Danzō and Orochimaru—or his lackey—were typically far more laden with threats than this one was. It was simply the way of things when negations involved traitors.

Kabuto's faith in his master was unequaled, but it was simple fact that their village wasn't large enough to survive a confrontation with one of the five greatest nations in the world.

Danzō nodded. "You speak true. It is well, then, that I have a gift for Orochimaru that may mollify him."

Kabuto waited for several minutes for a response, but none came. Danzō simply stared forwards, ignoring the man waiting beside him. When his annoyance at the Hokage's silence grew too strong, Kabuto spoke.

"A gift, Danzō-sama?" Kabuto said, trying to prompt the Hokage into revealing more about this present. The one-eyed man dispensed words as though each cost a thousand ryo.

"Indeed. You may pick her up on your way out." Danzō gave Kabuto a short wave of his hand, an obvious dismissal, but was otherwise motionless.

Kabuto's eyes widened at Danzō's dismissal. To be dismissed so, like a servant, by someone other than Orochimaru! It was intolerable. Nevertheless, they needed the old fool for now.

"Very well, Danzō-sama. I will look forwards to our next conversation." Done trying to deal with the taciturn leader of Konoha, Kabuto stalked from the room, his anger only lightly controlled.

Danzō turned to gaze at the retreating back of Orochimaru's second-in-command. He hoped Kabuto wouldn't damage the girl in his anger—he was known to do so at times, and the Anbu team he had sent after Zabuza to collect the girl had lost three members killing the Demon of the Bloody Mist, and another two to the ice-wielder before they had subdued her. Or was his 'temper' simply another act?

The moment Kabuto left the building, a signal was sent to Danzō's throne room. Once it arrived, the Anbu and Root hidden in the room vanished, leaving the leader of Konoha alone.

He stood, leaving the cane he used to walk while in the presence of others behind him. He turned on his heel and strode away, intent on looking through the massed knowledge of Konogakure, trailing all the way back to the Rikudo Sennin. Somewhere in the massive library of information, Danzō knew, would be the explanation of what had happened to his jinchuuriki—and more importantly, would be the details of how to get it back.

Behind him laid the corpses of two of the Anbu sent to retrieve the demon host. Failure of such magnitude had only one appropriate response. Perhaps fear would serve to make the survivors more competent.

* * *

><p>It was with great reluctance that Naruto returned to wakefulness. Rest without dreams was rare, and even if he had been knocked unconscious he still clung to it. However, the utterly wonderful scent wafting towards him was too great a draw to resist.<p>

He hadn't been able to get a bowl of it in months, but the day had not yet come to pass that Naruto would not recognize the smell of ramen. He would know that glorious, soul-lifting aroma even if it were placed amongst an army of other noodles.

'_But… I don't have any ramen._' The thought, though a horrible one to consider, was nevertheless true; getting any sort of food was challenge enough, let alone trying to get hold of his favorite. '_So why is it here?_'

Naruto became abruptly aware of his surroundings as that thought ran through his head. The bed he was in wasn't moldy, and he couldn't feel springs digging into his back. He couldn't smell the ever-present scent of fungus and filth and blood that had saturated his house, and although he hadn't opened his eyes, Naruto felt nothing of the breeze that flowed in from the open roof.

And he was _clean_, something he had not been in… far longer than he cared to consider. Slowly, quietly, he slid up to a sitting position. Blankets, too intact to be his, fell from his body as he rose. Naruto stretched his arms and yawned, but knocked over an object beside the bed—a lamp. His eyes snapped open at the sound.

Naruto slowly surveyed the room he found himself in. Pictures lined the walls, framed and obviously well cared for. A small red-headed girl, hair bound up into two tails, was prominent in many of them, seeming a little larger and more mature in each one. Naruto wondered if she was the daughter of whoever's home he was in. Or maybe that person's sister. Someone close, anyways, to have enough pictures that one could look at each one to see how she grew.

Naruto rose from the bed to take a closer look at the pictures, only distantly noting the pajamas he was garbed in. There were several group photos; some showed several men standing together, projecting a sense of camaraderie that showed through the picture. Others were of large groups of girls. Naruto was reminded of the class photos he saw at the Academy; he had been given detention during the ones for his class every year so he wouldn't appear in them, but he had seen his classmates gather outside through the windows.

"Yes Headmaster, I have the boy."

Naruto froze as he heard the quiet voice come in from across the hall. It was that man, the one who had come after him in the alley. So the man with glasses was his captor. Naruto couldn't help but worry at the thought.

What would they do with him? He didn't know where he was, but Naruto knew that he couldn't possibly be anywhere near the Land of Fire. He had never even heard of someplace like this, with all of the different clothes, the weird designs of the buildings, and the odd language they spoke.

When Naruto had climbed down from the titanic tree he had found himself in, he had felt overwhelmed. Everything was so _new_, so strange. Some people had pointed at him when he got to the bottom, and a couple of them had tried to say something to him. He hadn't understood them, though—the words they spoke were foreign and bizarre.

He had run as soon as he could. But once he had done that, he found that he didn't know what to do. He didn't know this city, or the people here, and the noises that kept coming from their weird machines wouldn't let him sleep at night.

He had tried once to spend some ryo at someplace that looked to be selling food, but the woman at the stand had given him a confused look, like she didn't even recognize the money. Ryo were used everywhere! Even in far away countries, the ryo was accepted as the common currency. That day he had tried to do what he normally did back in Tanzaku and dig up something to eat from the trash—lots of perfectly good food gets thrown away for being just a little bit over the expiration date, or for having a tiny bit of mold on it—but this city seemed to be far cleaner than what he had seen in Tanzaku. It had taken him a long time to find a can of some sort of chicken soup, which he had eaten cold.

Then that man—the dapper, blond-haired man with glasses and a kind look on his face—came to the alley he was scavenging it. Naruto should have known better than to wait until a strange man got close to him before running, but the gentleness of his features threw him off. But the taller blond had gotten too close to him, so Naruto tried to escape.

He didn't know how the stranger had gotten in front of him so quickly; Naruto had felt… something… when the man had moved, but he knew it wasn't chakra. It felt different. The other had started to talk again, but not as gently as he had before. Naruto hadn't understood what was said at first, but partway through the conversation he had suddenly started to understand. Naruto didn't know why, but the man's words suddenly made sense. Naruto didn't know why the man had been speaking gibberish when he knew an actual language.

"—_come with me to see the Headmaster," _the man had said. Naruto didn't know what a Headmaster was, but it didn't sound nice at all. A master of heads? Was he going to be executed for coming here? Naruto knew that some villages beheaded trespassers. This place didn't look like a ninja village, but what if it was?

So Naruto had tried to run away again, this time pulling out his secret weapon. But the Oiroike no Jutsu had failed him for the first time. He didn't know what happened to him after that, but then he had awoken here, in what he could only assume was the home of the man who captured him.

Said man hadn't noticed that Naruto had awoken, and was continuing to speak to someone. Naruto couldn't hear the other person at all, like the blond man's partner in the conversation—this 'Headmaster'—was someplace else. Was he using a radio?

"No, I don't think he is. He tried to run rather than attack, which I don't believe a malevolent—" The man stopped talking for a moment, as though he had been interrupted. "I know that, Headmaster. Yes, I did get the potions from Eva. She just left, but she promised that they were safe this time, so there won't be a repeat of the last incident. Do you know if these mix badly with ramen?"

As Naruto heard that last word, he couldn't help but perk up. Stepping as quietly as he could, he tried to sneak from the room. If he was lucky, he might be able to take the ramen and run before the man noticed he had woken up.

However, that plan was brought to an abrupt halt. Naruto had forgotten that he had knocked over the lamp; although it had landed rather softly on the carpet, it happened to be very hard and solid; solid enough make Naruto swear rather loudly when he stubbed his toe on it.

"So you're awake." Naruto looked up and flinched. The man who had knocked him out was standing by the doorframe, a bowl of ramen in his hands. Naruto hadn't even noticed him get so close.

Naruto's stomach growled as he stared in longing at the food in the man's hands. The tall blond laughed. "I was about to ask if you were hungry, but I suppose my question has already been answered. My name is Takahata Takamichi. Would you like some ramen?"

* * *

><p>It was obvious that this Takahata person had put something in the ramen. Even so, that didn't stop him from accepting the offer. After all, if Takahata had wanted to poison him, he had already had him under his power for some time.<p>

And Naruto hadn't had ramen in far too long. He would probably have eaten it even if it had been poisoned. Naruto was certain the fox wouldn't let a poison hurt him for long… probably. Well, maybe if it would kill him, or otherwise inconvenience it.

"So you didn't know what I was saying to you?"

Naruto nodded, as his mouth was full of noodles. After his initial mistrust, he felt himself start to warm up to this person. Takahata hadn't started to interrogate him the moment he sat down, as Naruto thought he would. Instead, Takahata had waited for him to eat and take the edge off of his hunger. It was only after Naruto had started eating less desperately (and after several warnings to slow down lest he make himself sick) than the questions had started, and much less roughly than Naruto had thought they would be.

For some reason, Naruto found himself answering the questions truthfully, even though he had considered lying. Maybe Takahata was just a trustworthy guy. "Yeah. Ever since I appeared on that giant tree, it was like I didn't know what anyone was saying. You started off talking like they did, but partway through your sentence you stopped speaking nonsense." Naruto laughed. "It was sort of weird, actually. Like different languages from the stories."

Takahata didn't respond immediately, his brow furrowed and a slight frown upon his face as he looked down, contemplative. "Naruto-kun, I was speaking Japanese the whole time. Virtually everyone in Mahora speaks it."

"Japanese?"

The older man grimaced. "There goes any possibility of this being easy. That's our language. Japanese—it's what we speak here in Japan."

That wasn't possible. There was a cold feeling in the base of Naruto's spine at the thought. It _wasn't_. Everyone knew that the idea of different languages was just in children's stories. Everyone, from every country and every village, spoke the same way. The icy reaches of northern Lightning to southernmost Land of Wind shared one tongue, and always have. The idea of there being… of... it was more like something from a fairy tale than real life.

Takahata must have seen the confusion and disbelief in Naruto's voice, because he continued to speak. "You don't recognize it? How about America? Africa? Megalomesenbria? The Hellas Empire? What about Britain, Rome, or Russia? Guam?" Takahata continued listing names Naruto had never heard of, leaving the boy to numbly shake his head in response.

The older man sighed, and leaned back. "This… shouldn't be possible."

Naruto gave a weak chuckle. "We agree on that, at least."

"How should I explain this?" Takahata wondered aloud. "There really doesn't seem to be a gentle way to do this. Naruto-kun, I've just listed nearly every major location in two worlds—and the third isn't accessible to humans in any way, shape, or form. There shouldn't be anyone in any of these three worlds that wouldn't recognize at least one of those—and there isn't a single place where the very idea of a foreign language would be considered a fable."

That wasn't something that Naruto wanted to hear. "Three worlds? That's… that's…" Naruto tried to hang onto the least important thing Takahata had said (three worlds the least important!), because he didn't want to think about what that meant.

It made sense.

He tried to open his mouth, to say something to end the silence, but no sound came forth. Naruto couldn't bring himself to speak. His gaze dropped to the bowl before him. There was still some of the broth and noodles from his ramen inside it, but he couldn't bring himself to eat.

'_I'm… in another world?_' Naruto shook his head at the thought. It was preposterous, impossible. He couldn't believe it. Or rather, he didn't want to believe it. This place was just too… different. The noises, the people, the sounds—everything seemed so alien to him.

It made sense. If Takahata wasn't lying—and why would he? No one would expect so wild a lie to be believed—then this place was completely and totally different from his own home. If the places he named were real, then Naruto had certainly never heard of them. And perhaps he had never been good at geography, but he hadn't heard a single "Land of _" in the list.

Three worlds? There could have been nine for all it mattered. That there were other worlds at all was unbelievable. But their machines, their clothes, the ceaseless light that lit the streets… they all demanded to be believed.

"You said you were speaking Japanese. How did I understand what you said, then?" Naruto said, turning his attention to something else. He could think about worlds later. Right now, he needed to get as many answers out of Takahata as he could.

"You're speaking it now."

Naruto immediately retorted. "That's ridiculous, I'm not—"

He was. Even as he said the words, his mouth formed around strange sounds. The syllables were different, the words were in different places in the sentence—this was _not_ what his language sounded like. But even as the sounds felt out of place, he understood them as clearly as he heard his own thoughts.

Naruto gaped in silence for long moments before managing to find words again. "H-How? That's not… how is that even possible?"

He didn't know what he was asking with the question. How was it possible to speak a language he didn't know? How was it possible to go to another world? How did things like different languages even exist in the first place?

"I don't know. If I were to guess, I would say magic—but I've never heard of a fourth world before, and I don't know of any spell that would let you learn a language in the middle of a conversation.

Naruto brought a shaky hand up to massage his brow. "Magic? Spells?" Had he not just learned he was on another planet, he would have been insulted that Takahata thought that he would believe in that. But here he was, speaking _another language_ in a bizarre town in a strange world. "Please tell me you're joking."

Takahata gave him a comforting smile and shook his head. "I'm afraid not. You don't believe in magic, then?

"I _didn't_."

"Ahaha… well, I suppose these are sort of extenuating circumstances, aren't they?" What the hell did extenuating even mean? "So yes, magic exists. It can be used for healing, travel, communication—and, unfortunately, for violence."

He hadn't needed to be told something so obvious. "Wherever there's power, there's going to be someone who wants to use it." Like Root had wanted to use him. Whether it was by or against the person with power, strength would always beget more fighting.

There was something in Takahata's eyes that made Naruto wary. As though he had heard more in his words than just what Naruto had said. "There's no need to worry. Japan isn't at war with anyone, and Mahora is one of the safest places in all of Asia."

"That's not what I—oh, forget it," Naruto muttered. Had Takahata thought he was scared of fighting? He didn't need an adult trying to hide that sort of thing from him—he had trained to be a ninja, after all. "So what can you do with magic? There's a lot of different stories about it."

Takahata chuckled. "That would be a little long to go over right now. For now, let's just say it can do nearly anything, and leave in-depth discussions for later, hm?"

'_Do anything, huh? I'd love to have that! I would get all the food I wanted, live in a great big house, never have to worry about being found by Danzō again, and even…_'

Naruto's eyes were wide and sparkling as he spoke. "Can…can we go and see the dinosaurs?"

* * *

><p>Takahata sweatdropped. He really needed to have someone explain what magic could and couldn't do to the kid before Naruto asked someone to do something they shouldn't. Perhaps he should introduce him to Negi—it would do Negi well to have a friend his age.<p>

Or at least a friend his height.

"Like I said, Naruto-kun, it can do _nearly_ anything. Something like travelling through time just can't be done. Every mage who has tried has only succeeded in hurting themselves. And often anyone in the immediate vicinity."

"I wasn't talking about time travel! I just wanted to—"

Takahata hastily interrupted the boy. He had no desire to wade through an endless barrage of requests for magic again. He shuddered from remembering how Shizuna, the Headmaster's assistant, had reacted when she was told about it. The Headmaster had slept for two days straight after that debacle.

"Naruto-kun, I was focusing more on the matters of your other world and language at the time, but you said that you had appeared at the World Tree? What were you doing before you showed up there?"

"I rolled into a pool of water to drown myself in order to avoid being captured."

The boy's look of surprise showed Takahata that he had been intending to say something else entirely. He could see why—whatever the boy was involved in, it was only to be expected that Naruto try to keep it a secret. Naruto leaped to his feet and stumbled away from the table, staring at him.

But Takahata had a responsibility to his students—he had not wanted to put Evangeline's truth-compelling potion in the (many) bowls of ramen the boy had eaten, but he had to find out if Naruto was dangerous or not. He could never forgive himself if his own laxity resulted in the injury of anyone in Mahora.

But this… he hadn't expected to hear this. He paled—a child willing to drown himself to avoid capture? Who, or what, was he running from?

Takahata needed to find out more about what had happened. He needed to know if Naruto—or the people who had tried to take him—would be dangerous, either to the boy or to anyone else. "Tell me more about this water, and about why they were chasing you. I need to know more to be able to help you."

Naruto's mouth opened to begin to speak, but shoved his hand in his mouth before he could say anything. Naruto's eyes looked into Takahata's with anger and hurt betrayal burning within them. He almost saw what looked like flecks of red within them, but they disappeared so quickly that he disregarded them.

He was impressed that Naruto had figured out that he couldn't control himself when he was told to talk. He must have guessed it from overhearing him talk to the Headmaster, and from the conversation about magic. Takahata couldn't say he hadn't intended that—maybe direct confrontation wouldn't be best, but he wasn't going to force the truth from the kid all unawares.

Takahata hastened to explain himself, to try to mitigate the damage done. To force the truth from a child was a cruel thing, but perhaps he could make it less so. "I am sorry about the truthfulness potion, Naruto-kun. But this entire city is a school, and I am a teacher. I must know anything that could pose a danger to my students—I need to know whether or not that danger was you."

"I don't think you would hurt them, but I have to know more about the people who were chasing you, and I need you to tell me more about how you got here."

Naruto's glare softened, but by so little. Takahata had hoped for more—but perhaps that was too much to be expected. Naruto didn't take his hand from his mouth.

Takahata sighed, and walked over to the younger blond. He sat down in the chair Naruto had previously occupied—close to him, but with his head lower than Naruto's—and looked him in the eyes. "Naruto-kun, I'm not going to hurt you, I promise," Takahata said. "I don't make promises lightly. If you can just tell me who was chasing you, and why, I can protect you. You won't have to run from them again."

Naruto shook his head, but didn't step away. Neither did he break eye contact with Takahata, which encouraged him to keep pushing. "I can stop them. This entire city is a school, with dozens of sensei of magic. We could stop an army, and we can protect you. Just please… trust us. Had I had the opportunity to talk with you first, I would never have used the potion."

"For the sake of all the students here, who may also need to be protected from whoever is hunting you, please. Please trust me." Takahata finished his entreaty, not daring to look away from the child who stood before him. '_Please let this work. I can help you_.'

A tear slid down Naruto's cheek, and another. He tried to talk, but he seemed to have no voice with which to speak. Shudders wracked his small form as he attempted to speak.. Takahata stayed silent; although he didn't show it, he was gravely concerned by Naruto's reaction. Just how traumatic was this experience, to cause this?

Finally, Naruto found words—too many of them. He stared straight ahead as he told the ever more horrified Takahata about his life, from his earliest memories of the orphanage, to his abandonment on the streets, to his escape from the Anbu; far more information than Takahata had expected. And far worse, as well—that a child would suffer such a life dismayed and enraged him.

At times, Takahata wished he could cover his ears, to block the litany of suffering. He knew the feeling well—he had been in the Great War, and had later been to Darfur, to South Africa, to the Middle East. He had seen such horrible things done to—and by—children. But he had never seen a child so terribly… alone.

Throughout the entire speech, the hours that it lasted, Naruto's voice never rose above a deathly silent, emotionless whisper. Takahata didn't think he could forget the sound of that painfully empty voice—it felt as though it had burnt into his mind, like the frantic cries of the first man he had killed, or the soul-rending wails of a mother whose child had been shot.

Even so, Takahata felt a part of him rise in hope when Naruto finished speaking and collapsed, emotionally exhausted. Carrying the boy to the bed, he could not help but think that life would get better soon for the boy. From his description, Takahata did not believe these 'Anbu' could follow him, or they would have already. Which meant he was safe. And not only was Naruto safe, but he was in Mahora. Loneliness could not survive long in this place.

For Naruto, Takahata believed, such pain and loneliness would soon become a thing of the past.

He could not have known that, in the midst of the unveiled truth, there had been one thing that Naruto had not spoken of. He could not have known that the truth potion had been corrupted by a far greater power.

He could not have known anything of the immense and fell power that was the Kyuubi no Youko.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>

Hi everyone! Thank you for reading!

I hope it came out alright—there's more conversation here, and I know already that dialogue is a weakness of mine. I hope it comes out realistically.

Hm… choosing what to call Takahata was sort of hard. His given name is Takamichi, but honestly when I think of him I think 'Takahata'! I decided to go with Takahata in the end, though—just because, as a teacher (who isn't as ridiculously close to his class as Negi is), referring to him by his surname just felt more suitable.

sagitarius mentioned that Gaara would have killed a couple of the characters—in order to show why they are alive, I moved a scene I intended to have a couple chapters in to this one (well, I didn't write the scene to show they were alive, I wrote it for a different reason… but it does explain why). I think its placement works well enough now, though. I hope this chapter answered the question.

Something that I didn't respond to earlier—some said they were hoping for fight scenes soon. I can't say 'soon' (not knowing how many chapters it will take me to get there), but this is taking place just before the Kyoto trip, so I most definitely assure you action will come.

I simultaneously look forwards to and fear introducing some of the characters. Natsumi, for instance, and Misora—how on earth does one capture those amazing facial expressions of theirs in writing?


	3. Curiouser and Curiouser

Thank you, everyone who has read this story! And a greater thanks to everyone who reviewed it!

**Disclaimer:**

I own neither Naruto nor Negima! Magister Negi Magi/Mahou Sensei Negima (take your pick of the name). These are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and Ken Akamatsu, respectively.

Likewise, I do not possess any characters from other stories or other mediums of storytelling that may or may not be referenced in this fictional piece.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Three:<br>Curiouser and Curiouser**

"I've been expecting you, Takamichi-kun. I take it your chat with the boy went well?"

Takahata nodded. "It did, in a sense." He would have to remember to check Naruto for how he reacts to potions. Not everyone could take them safely—they always work, but the rare individual could get sick from them. He didn't like the way Naruto started to cough and choke during some of his explanations. In that breathless voice, quieter than a whisper, the harsh coughing had been jarring and worrisome.

He gave the room a cursory glance as he entered. The room had a slight archaic feel to it, reminiscent of an old European manor. The windows were elaborate but not ostentatious, and bookshelves lined the walls. A few new furnishings had been added, but the Headmaster's room was otherwise the same as it had been before he left.

He sat in one of the cushy chairs before the Headmaster's desk. "I'm surprised Eva isn't here. Considering that Naruto-kun avoided her detection, I thought she would have stayed around to learn more about him." Takahata supposed that the Headmaster could tell her later, but she wasn't the type to just wait around for secondhand information.

Headmaster Konoe Konoemon laughed, his elongated head bobbing. His earrings swayed, hooked onto the Headmaster's stretched lobes. "She said that she was supposed to meet with Negi-kun today. I hadn't thought Evangeline would be able to have a civilized conversation with Negi-kun after their little squabble, but they seem to be getting along without incident, ho hmm."

Takahata winced at the Headmaster referring to Negi and Evangeline's fight as a 'squabble'. Some of Eva's spells—particularly the ice magic—could have gotten Negi sent to the hospital, if they had connected. Evangeline would have been fine, of course, but Negi was only human. "How do you know they're…"

"Not killing each other?" Konoemon finished. "A simple observation spell I put on Evangeline before she left. I doubt she noticed, depowered as she is, but she may have. It can be hard to tell with her."

Takahata couldn't help but agree. For all that he had known her for years, he still found her impossible to read much of the time. "Speaking of those two, what happened after they fought? Negi-kun told me some of it, but he just doesn't have the experience to tell me everything that might be important.

"Very little, actually. Once the blackout ended, the barrier once again blocked Evangeline's powers, causing her to fall and young Negi-kun to save her. The next day, she returned to class, and was going to talk to Negi-kun after school ended but fell ill. Today is the first time they will be talking since then."

Takahata was satisfied. That was what Negi had mentioned in his email, although the Headmaster's version was, of course, far shorter. Negi wasn't the sort to deceive, but he had an annoying habit of keeping information to himself if he thought it would upset people.

'_Although,_' Takahata thought, '_I do hope he doesn't mention this—or Evangeline at all—to Nekane. She might… overreact._' That was an understatement. Negi's cousin could be frighteningly protective.

"But that wasn't what you came here to talk about, or you would have simply spoken to Negi-kun," the Headmaster said. He leaned forwards in his chair, interlacing his fingers on the desk. His eyes peeked out from the shadows formed by his hairy brows. "The boy—the one you found. You said his name was Naruto, yes?"

Takahata did not answer immediately. He hadn't taken the opportunity to order his thoughts before he came to speak to the Headmaster, but perhaps he should have.

'_By the First and Final Spell, how do I explain this without seeming insane?_'

"Uzumaki Naruto was his name, yes," Takahata said, blindly searching for a way to explain Naruto's origins. "He's from a, ah, rather distant local."

One of Konoemon's gargantuan eyebrows rose. "Oh? Is he from overseas, then? Or is it the Magical World?"

"Not exactly, sir."

A look of slight irritation appeared on the Headmaster's face. "Well then, where is from? Kansai isn't far enough away, and if he was from the demon's home we would already know. Out with it, Takamichi-kun. Why do you look so hesitant?"

"Because I think that Naruto-kun is from a different world entirely than Mundus Vetus or Mundus Magicus."

Although the statement was cliché, the silence truly was deafening.

Konoemon gaped at him in open surprise. "That-that is a bold claim, Takamichi-kun. Many mages have searched to see if other worlds existed, but since the discovery of the connections binding the Old World, the Magical World, and the Demon's World, none has ever been shown to exist."

Takahata pulled a glass vial from his pocket, empty save for tiny drops of clear fluid. "Eva brewed this dose of the Οἴνος Τοû Ἀλήθειας Potion herself. We both know how good she is at alchemy and potion-making." Konoemon blanched at the comment, having felt her skill at the art firsthand far too many times when she had first been magically bound to Mahora. "Naruto-kun was telling the truth."

"Naruto-kun didn't use magic or chi when he transformed in the alley. Not even the slightest amount. When he talked to me, he described what he called 'chakra'." Takahata pulled out a cigarette and lighter, looking to the Headmaster for permission. Receiving it, he lit the smoke as the older man incanted a small spell to disperse the scent of it. Takahata certainly didn't mind—he hadn't been able to stand the smell either, before he started.

"It's a power his people create by combining their body's physical energy with the spiritual energy of their mind and soul. They use it to perform superhuman feats—well, some of them do, at any rate."

"Like your Kankaho?" the Headmaster asked. He stood up and began to pace in thought, his advanced age revealing itself in the stoop of his shoulders. Konoemon had lived for a long, long time, and his years were etched into his face—even so, he moved with all the grace one would expect from a man who had reached the highest levels of martial skill.

Takahata was surprised at the Headmaster's comment. "Not at all. Chi is more than just the power of the body, it depends almost as much on mental focus and life energy—the physical energy Naruto-kun spoke of was _purely_ of the body. And magic certainly isn't solely the power of the mind. Further, chakra seems to be something coming solely from the inside, not a combination of within and without like the Kanka" That the Headmaster didn't already possess full knowledge of the Kankaho was surprising, especially considering that he had known Takahata's own master. He hoped the old man wasn't beginning to go senile.

"Although it was curious… how his people used chakra was remarkably similar to techniques one would find in magic or chi manipulation—if the techniques were almost entirely designed for war, that is." From what Naruto had told him, much of their world revolved around the ceaseless border conflicts or outright wars between nations. Well, Takahata couldn't claim that the same didn't exist in some places on Earth.

Konoemon stopped pacing entirely, staring at Takahata with a look of intense interest upon his face. "I have never heard of anything like that. You said you couldn't feel anything at all when he transformed? I don't mean magic or chi, but any reaction at all?"

His question was answered with a shake of the head. "Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. I'll need to get Naruto-kun in here, to find out more about this chakra—particularly if it was what interfered with Evangeline's senses." The Headmaster laughed softly. "I haven't gone to my workroom beneath the library for quite some time. It will be a pleasure to do some research again."

There was silence before the Headmaster spoke again. "Chakra… it has the same name, but it sounds entirely different from the chakras one finds in Hinduism, Buddhism, and yoga. It is something new, certainly, but discovering this does not mean that he is necessarily from another world."

"Not that I disbelieve you or don't trust in Evangeline's skill," the Headmaster hastened to explain, "but I cannot accept so great a claim without further evidence. Something you know, I expect—you wouldn't have come to me if you didn't have a stronger case than that. What more is there that you were going to say, beyond speaking of his abilities? Tell me about his home."

It was a moment before Takahata responded. He wouldn't lie, or keep any truly important information from the Headmaster, but he didn't feel that he should talk about Naruto's entire life. Even if he had forced it from the boy—or perhaps especially because of that—it was still private, and discussing it would be Naruto's decision.

There had been enough betrayal of trust already.

He decided to speak in generalities to avoid mentioning the personal events in Naruto's life. It would serve well enough, and he could avoid thinking about some of what Naruto had told him. It wouldn't do to lose his temper before the Headmaster. He could be angry on the boy's behalf later.

"He came from a place called Konohagakure no Sato, located in the Land of Fire. This was a military village, which sent its shinobi out to serve as spies, thieves, bodyguards, assassins, and warriors for the sake of its nation. To be a ninja in this village is the most illustrious life available—to the last man, shinobi are the heroes of their home. Konohagakure is one of five great shinobi villages of his world—there are dozens of other, less powerful ones that he doesn't even know the names of. Although they nominally remain in service to the daimyo which rule over them, practically speaking most nations are ruled by the leader of that country's ninja village."

Takahata had to stop to breathe and collect his thoughts, trying to think of what else Naruto had told him that would show the Headmaster how utterly unfamiliar Naruto had made his home out to be. "Countries affiliated with ninja exist across his entire world. I asked him about these countries—tried to find out if any of them sounded familiar. I couldn't recognize a single one. He thought magic was just stories told to children, and didn't recognize the term 'chi' at all."

He would have continued, but was interrupted by the Headmaster. "Enough, Takamichi-kun. You can give me more details later—as a written report, preferably. It's so much easier to mull over information when it has been written down. But what you've told me is… fascinating. Utterly and completely enthralling."

The Headmaster laughed. "Ho hmm… I haven't been this intrigued by anything in years! I really will need to have a long talk with that boy sometime. But for now, let me think."

Takahata stayed silent as Konoemon resumed his walk, pacing from one end of the room to the others. The old man's fingers trailed along the spines of his small library as he moved, before coming to a rest in front of a bookcase set slightly apart from the others.

"Did you know, Takamichi-kun, that this shelf does not truly hold books?"

Takahata didn't see what that had to do with the topic at hand, but dutifully responded with the negative.

"Every page is actually a viewing device. Each one shows a different book stored in Library Island. So each of these 'books' would let one read hundreds of tomes hidden away where even the Library Exploration Club could never find them."

Takahata doubted that—the students were never to be underestimated.

"I have perused through all of them, and have read the Book of Melchizedek in its entirety." The Headmaster stopped, and turned to gaze at Takahata with his inscrutable eyes. "Yet I have never—not in the hundred and fifty years I've known, _never_—heard of anything such as this."

Konoemon sighed, and hobbled back to his desk. He sat down slowly, carefully. Old—that was the only word Takahata could use to describe the Headmaster at that moment. He knew the man was ancient, of course, but the Headmaster always seemed spry and full of life. But now, he just seemed tired.

Takahata started when the Headmaster's voice sounded again. There was a strained tone to the man's voice. "Tell me how he came to appear on the World Tree."

The nod Takahata gave was pointless, as the Headmaster's eyes were closed as he focused on all the information he had been given. "He was being chased by shinobi for political reasons. Due to his own limited training, he was able to run from them for some time, but was eventually caught near a small body of water—a pond, or perhaps a spring. He rolled into it to try to escape, but as he fell in the water he saw that it didn't look like water at all, but a great number of images piling atop one another, so closely bound that they flowed like liquid. Next thing he knew, he was atop the largest tree in Mundus Vetus."

Takahata avoided mentioning that Naruto's 'escape' would have been death. Given what he had said about this 'Root' led by the new Hokage, Takahata couldn't bring himself to blame the boy for doing what he had. Some things truly were worse than death. Even so, it was awful to think of someone so young making that sort of decision.

He did wonder, though—how had Naruto survived running for so long? From how he had described the Anbu, he didn't think that Naruto would have been able to last as long as he had without being caught. The Kekkei Genkai the boy had mentioned came to mind—the healing Kekkei Genkai Naruto said he had might have helped him run longer. If it could help a half-trained boy escape elite warriors, it was no wonder Root wanted to capture him for it. And it was no wonder that Naruto had desired to desperately to get away; it didn't take much to imagine what sort of testing would be done to determine the limits of his power.

Sensing that the Headmaster wanted to know more, he continued, glad to have something else to focus on. "After he climbed down from the World Tree, Naruto found that he didn't understand the language. Assuming the worst, Naruto-kun hid from—"

The Headmaster interrupted. "A moment, Takamichi-kun. I had intended to ask earlier, when you said he was from another world, but how did you learn this? It isn't surprising that he wouldn't know one of our languages if he was from elsewhere, but how did you get this information from him if he did not speak Japanese?"

"I'll get to that in a moment, Headmaster. The first thing Naruto-kun did was hide—please remember sir, that he had just been chased by very dangerous individuals, and had suddenly been teleported, for lack of a better term, to a strange and new locale. From his story, it looks like he hid somewhere around the central plaza for most of a day."

"After that, he didn't really do very much, as far as I can tell. He mostly just pulled food from the garbage and slept in the alleys."

That this had occurred in Mahora and had not been corrected was upsetting to say the least, and he could tell from the Headmaster's angry expression that the leader of the school shared his opinion. He expected that the campus police were going to get a very angry visit soon.

But what was far worse, so far as Takahata was concerned, was that Naruto had been all but living in the streets for years after being forced to flee from Konohagakure.

Then there was his life _in_ the village—although at least he had an apartment then. Takahata still couldn't understand why Naruto had been treated so horribly, and Naruto said that he didn't either. From some of Naruto's comments about his parents, Takahata thought it had to do with the boy's family. People could be cruel to innocents for the crimes of another.

Naruto's reaction to the potion had worsened at that point. He would need to find out how long Naruto had been under the potion's influence when he started coughing. It had started when he had explained the villager's unexplained hatred towards him, and his reasons for fleeing the village—how many minutes into the conversation had that been? He would have to remember to avoid letting him drink potions in the future.

"In regards to the language barrier you mentioned… that's actually quite the story. I could hardly believe it when he told me, but the very idea of foreign tongues is just a fable to his people. I don't know how, but it seems that everyone in his world speaks the same language."

"That's… not possible. Not for an entire planet." Not possible… impossible… Takahata was beginning to get very tired of those words.

He hadn't needed to be told that—he'd had quite enough encounters with language problems himself. Takahata didn't know what was going on with Naruto's home—without magic existing there and with Naruto not even understanding that languages were real—but he had spent a lot of time travelling over the years. The language barrier was one of the hardest to overcome when he went to the third world countries. It was worse in Mundus Magicus, where the massive translation spell ensured that everyone who travelled through the portals understood Latin (and only Latin, despite countless attempts to improve upon the magic), but it didn't do anything for the stranger languages one could find in the remote corners of that world, some of which weren't understood by anyone outside of the village.

"Nevertheless, it's true—the potion confirmed it. Naruto didn't understand a thing when I found him. According to him, I was partway through a sentence when he suddenly knew what I was saying. He even started speaking Japanese without noticing it. He was shocked when I pointed it out, so I'm certain it wasn't intentional."

"This boy is becoming more and more of a mystery with every passing moment," the Headmaster said, closing his eyes and leaning back in his chair. Takahata could only assume the mage was comparing the information to his knowledge of language-acquisition magics—there were a few spells that could hasten the learning process, but nothing so drastic. The frustrated expression crossing Konoemon's face told him that the older man didn't know much more than he did.

"You said he was being chased—by dangerous people, no less. Will we need to defend against these? Is Uzumaki Naruto himself a danger to our students?" the Headmaster asked. His chair creaked as he sharply rocked it back to an upright position.

"No and no. The people chasing Naruto-kun were what he called 'Anbu', the elite ninja of his village. If they were able to come after him, they would have. And from how he spoke of them, he would have already been captured if they were here. So I don't believe they will be a problem."

"And Naruto-kun? He's not going to be a danger. He hasn't had much human interaction these past few years—he was exiled from his home when he was eight due to political upheaval, and has lived without a real home since then. So he might not mingle well with other people, but he does have a good heart. He'd never try to actually hurt someone." Of this, Takahata was quite certain. He didn't know the boy well, but Naruto showed a remarkable lack of malevolence towards the people of his village—considering how he had been treated, Takahata viewed this as a sure sign that Naruto wouldn't hurt anyone at Mahora.

Takahata had fought in wars, and had seen amongst the noblest and most wretched of men. He was a teacher, and had seen children who seemed to be on a one-way street to prison and others who were blissfully normal in every respect. He didn't think it was arrogant to call himself a good judge of character. No, Naruto wasn't a threat to his students.

The Headmaster leaned back in his chair, stroking his beard as he thought. Takahata was certain that Konoemon would let Naruto stay in Mahora—he had a soft spot for those without a place of their own. Takahata had always thought that it was a trait that made him such a good Headmaster—although considering that he himself had originally got a teaching position due to that soft spot, he supposed that he might be a bit biased.

He already knew Naruto would be allowed to stay here… that decision would take only a moment for the Headmaster. So what was he thinking about?

"Forgive me, Takahata, but you will not be able to stay long at Mahora," the Headmaster said.

Surprised by the new direction the Headmaster had taken the conversation, Takahata sputtered. "Wh-what? I just got back! The AAA isn't supposed to call me again for at least a week! There's a lot I need to do here, now that I'm back." What was the Headmaster thinking?

The Headmaster waved Takahata's protests aside. "It will only take a few days. And it's not the AAA that needs you this time—it was a personal request from an old friend of yours in the Magical World. From Ariadne, I believe."

"Seras?"

"The one and only. The kraken are migrating two years earlier than they normally would. The fishing fleets aren't going to be able to leave their travel paths in time to avoid being attacked. She'll need to deploy you and a regiment of the Ariadne Magic Knights to beat back the kraken while the fishermen pull away into safer waters." Konoemon sighed sadly, and his voice was touched with regret. "I know you wished to spend time with Negi-kun and Asuna-chan before the field trip we've been planning, but I'm afraid that won't be possible now."

Takahata frowned. Kraken were powerful—he couldn't blame Seras for wanting his help. He might even run into Jack over there, which would be… annoying, actually, if somewhat pleasant. He wasn't too worried about how Negi and Asuna would be if he left—he would like to speak with them both, but he was certain their battle with Eva would be the most dangerous thing to happen to them for a long time. The field trip at this time of year typically went to Hawaii, anyways. No one in Class 3-A ever got hurt when they went to Hawaii.

"When will I be leaving? I was hoping to introduce Naruto-kun and Negi-kun, if he's to be allowed to stay."

"Of course he can stay—you can even introduce them yourself, so long as you do it today. Although you did mention that he has lived on the streets for some time, yes?"

The nod Takahata gave was hesitant. "True, but—"

"Then we can't simply put him in a class with other students, now can we? He needs to make up for his lost education. He needs to learn about our world and culture. To be made a laughingstock in one's first day of school in years for something like that would be horrible, would it not? To say nothing of the obvious problems his ignorance about our world, our technology, our history—I don't think I need to explain how much trouble that could cause."

Konoemon 'ho-hmmed' and nodded. "Yes, I don't think he should be made a student. But we will need to keep him close by, won't we? It will be important to keep an eye on him, and I'm afraid everyone I'd trust to do that would be completely occupied during school. So we can't just give him a room somewhere in the city. We'll need to do something somewhat… different for him."

The Headmaster stood from his desk and strode purposefully from the room. "Come Takamichi! I will escort you back to your apartment, and as we walk we can speak of what to do with young Naruto-kun."

* * *

><p>Naruto walked through the streets of Mahora with wide eyes. He hadn't really looked at the city when he had arrived—everything had seemed too malevolent then, too new, too frightening. He had tried his best to avoid leaving the alleys, where no one could see him—and just as importantly, where he couldn't see the rest of the world.<p>

But now he was clean, dressed in clothes that had been magically repaired and refitted, and with a stomach that was full for the first time in ages. It was remarkable what such seemingly small changes could make.

Naruto had never seen a place like this. Even with the great numbers of people who were constantly coming and going, the place seemed more orderly than either Konohagakure or Tanzaku had been. His cities had been made to defend against invasion, so the streets were confusing and the buildings often shaped so as to provide defense against attackers, rather than for ease of use or appearances.

Takahata put out a hand to stop Naruto, but pulled it back when Naruto recoiled away from the touch. Takahata didn't acknowledge Naruto's flinch, and he was grateful for that.

Takahata waved, catching the attention of someone in the crowd. A boy pulled himself from the mass of people to jog over to Takahata and Naruto. He paused when he saw Naruto beside the older male, but quickly turned to the man and addressed him like old friends.

"Takamichi! Where've you been? I tried to call you, but you didn't answer your phone. Did you hear about my fight with Evangeline? Are you—"

Takahata was forced to interrupt the boy before the swarm of questions grew to unmanageable proportions. "Slow down, Negi-kun! I can't answer questions when you throw them at me all at once."

Negi didn't look like anyone Naruto had ever seen before. Negi's red hair looked like he had tried to make it orderly, but it had become messy again. He wore a suit—Naruto had only ever seen a suit before because Takahata wore one, but he thought it had a formal look. It looked odd seeing it on another kid, but it was somehow suitable. Small glasses rested on his nose and something long and wrapped in strips of cloth was strapped to his back.

Negi looked down contritely. "Sorry Takamichi." When he spoke, it was in a calmer, more sedate voice. "But where were you? I wanted to talk to you after the fight—to ask about some… things, that I found out from Evangeline-san. About the Thousand Master." An aside glance was tossed Naruto's direction.

"The Thousand Master..." Takahata repeated, his voice low and soft. "Eva and he were… complicated." His eyes gazed off into the distance, seeing something apart from the here and now. Naruto was reminded of Sarutobi, and of some of the older ninja he had seen, like Iruka-sensei. Sometimes they would stare at something he couldn't see. Ayame had said that they were remembering, but Naruto certainly never got lost in memories like that.

Takahata's attention abruptly pulled itself back to the boy in front of him. "I'll have to tell you about them soon. Watching the two of them fight were some of the funniest moments of my life." A small smile graced his face at the thought, but his eyes said that there was more than that. "Perhaps when I come back from my trip?"

Negi, who had been practically vibrating with eagerness to hear more about this 'Thousand Master' person, visibly deflated. Naruto did as well, though to a lesser extent. Someone with a name like that sounded amazing. "From you—you're leaving, then? I didn't think you would be sent back out again, so soon after leaving." Naruto thought that Negi sounded a bit hurt—he could sympathize. Takamichi was the first—well, only—person he had really talked to since he came here. Or that he had really talked to in years, to tell the truth.

Naruto had to say his part. "You can't leave now Takamichi! You said you'd show me around this weird city!" He intended to hold him to his word, too—it was the least the man could do. He had never disliked a bowl of ramen before, but he couldn't help but hate the memory of the last batch he ate—filled with that potion that made him tell the truth.

He had beaten it, though. Nothing was tougher than Uzumaki Naruto! He had clenched his body so tightly that it _hurt_, his torso especially. But he hadn't said anything about the Kyuubi.

Naruto wasn't one to hold a grudge. But… well, he'd be lying if he said that he wasn't a little bit glad Takahata was leaving, regardless of what he said. He didn't like being angry at someone for trying to help the people who depended on him. But he was.

Takahata raised his hands, making a settling motion in the air. "I know, I know. But there's some urgent business rather far away—in an entire different world, you could say." Negi looked upset, but nodded in acceptance. Naruto, on the other hand, cocked his head to the side. What were the other worlds like, anyways? Was this entire world like Mahora? Why couldn't humans visit one of the planets?

"Takamichi, would you please introduce me to your friend?" Negi asked politely, sending another curious glance Naruto's way. It was obvious, even to someone as inexperienced as Naruto, that he had wanted to know since the very beginning.

Takahata looked taken aback. "Sorry, I should have done so from the beginning. Negi-kun, this is Uzumaki Naruto. Naruto-kun, Negi Springfield from Wales." Seeing Naruto's blank look, he elaborated, "That's a country, not the animal. It's across the ocean."

Naruto didn't see it—curious as he was as to how Negi could come from a whale—but Negi's forehead creased in thought when he noticed that Takahata had not mentioned where Naruto was from. That Takahata had elaborated on Wales in the first place was unusual—he had never done so before. Negi thought that was important, but he didn't know how.

Negi stepped forwards. "A pleasure to meet you, Uzumaki-san," Negi said, holding out his hand.

"No need to be so formal, just call me Naruto," Naruto said. He couldn't stand to be called by his family name—mostly because there wasn't any family to go with it. He extended his own hand, but it made only the briefest of contacts with Negi's before he pulled it back. He thought he withheld the wince well—he didn't like being touched. "Nice to meet you!"

When he was in the Academy, Naruto had never really had the opportunity to talk to the other children—from day one, they had avoided him. And there wasn't anyone around him in Tanzaku. He had never actually said those words to someone before.

It felt… strange. But not unpleasant.

Takahata nodded approvingly. "I hope the two of you feel the same later, because you'll be seeing a lot more of each other in the future." He held his tongue for a moment as both the boys looked at one another with quizzical expressions, wondering what he had meant. "Negi-kun, Naruto is going to be the new assistant teacher."

Naruto stared blankly at Takahata. He was certain he hadn't heard correctly. "I'm… excuse me?"

"You are going to be an assistant teacher," Takahata said, speaking slowly and with clearly defined words so that Naruto had no chance of misinterpreting them.

Naruto was dumbstruck. He was only—well, not old enough to teach! He hadn't even completed the Academy, how the hell was he supposed to teach someone?

"B-but Takamichi, the Headmaster said that I was doing well!" Negi stammered, sounding as confused as Naruto felt. "I don't need an assistant to teach Class 3-A—"

Wait, what? This kid was a teacher?!

Naruto could see that Negi was getting upset, but Takahata spoke before he could build up any steam. "The Headmaster has full faith in your abilities as a teacher, particularly after you managed to help 2-A achieve the highest grade in the school."

It was startling how much Takahata's soft-spoken voice affected Negi. Naruto was reminded of Ayame and the Hokage, and couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy that he ruthlessly stomped down moments after it arose.

Negi, calmer after Takahata's intervention, said, "Then why do I need an assistant teacher? No offense to Uzumaki-s-san—" Negi stuttered as Naruto glared at him. "I-I mean, Naruto-san."

"I told you already, call me Naruto!" Naruto scowled at Takahata and Negi. He wasn't too fond of formality, either. "What's up with Negi being a teacher, anyways? He can't be older than eleven!"

"I'm ten," Negi said, as though that made all the difference.

"Fine, he's ten then! I mean, I haven't even finished the Academy—I don't know how to teach a class. That's—that's—" Naruto struggled to find a word to describe how uncomfortable the idea of a child teacher was.

"Bizarre? Peculiar? Disconcerting?" Negi offered.

"Uh… right. One of those."

Negi looked like he would reply, but Takahata's soft laughter stopped him before the words left his mouth. "I'm sure this must seem strange to you, Naruto-kun. I admit, it's rather abnormal to have people so young teaching," Takahata's chuckles died down as he continued, "Extremely abnormal, actually."

"But I assure you that Negi-kun is qualified. He's actually earned a degree from Oxford. He's a genius, particularly in regards to languages. He learned Japanese in just two weeks."

"B-but Takamichi, I still don't have all the words down, and when I try to write in kanji it—"

Takahata waved off Negi's protests. "Don't be so humble, Negi-kun. Be proud of what you've done—it was a truly amazing feat. You've achieved an admirable rapport with the girls already. And that, I think, is the most important sign that you are doing well.

One of the passersby bumped into Negi, who nearly knocked Naruto over. The number of people in the intersection was increasing—Naruto couldn't help but feel uncomfortable with so many others around him.

Takahata must have noticed—or perhaps he was simply feeling crowded as well. Regardless of which it was, his next words relieved Naruto. "Perhaps we should head inside? There's a small tea shop nearby, where we could talk without there being so many people."

At Negi and Naruto's agreement, Takahata lead the two of them aside. Naruto had never seen multiple stores being in a single building before—at home, each business stood as its own establishment. As they entered the homey little store, he was struck by the herbal scent that pervaded the store. Plants abounded, with a piece of greenery on each table and pots of them lining the windows. A small old lady stood behind the counter—as they entered, bells attached to the door ringing, she pulled a leaf from a nearby plant and began to grind it in a small mortar and pestle set upon the counter.

When the old lady greeted them, it was with a voice that was wispy and quivery with age. Takahata said something quiet to her in return before leading them to a table set a short distance from the entryway.

Naruto gave Negi an aside glance as they set down. So he was a 'genius'? Naruto didn't like to set stock in such things. He remembered the ones from the Academy—they had been rude and arrogant. Negi, on the other hand, seemed considerably less so. Naruto didn't know how long it would last, though.

"So why am _I_ becoming a—a teacher?" Naruto said. He didn't try to hide his disgust and horror at that terrifying word. "I don't know anything about anything about… about… all of this!" he said, waving his arm at the world. Naruto didn't like admitting that. Saying you didn't know how to do something showed weakness, and people could take advantage of that. He didn't know how different it would be here at this… school…, though. It had been true in the Academy, though, so he didn't think here would be much of a change.

Takahata acknowledged what Naruto said with a tilt of his head. "So you had mentioned when we spoke earlier. However, that's why you're the _assistant_ teacher. You won't be giving lessons. You're job will for the most part be to help Negi-kun with his duties—watching over tests, grading exams, carrying messages to other teachers, and other busywork. The most you'll ever have to do is substitute for Negi-kun if he gets sick. You'll also be assisting some of the other teachers, but primarily Negi-kun."

"That sounds boring."

"Perhaps." Takahata sounded like he knew something that Naruto didn't, and that something was absolutely hilarious. "But the Headmaster will give you regular paychecks, and also provide for room and board."

Naruto's eyes lit up at that. He probably should have figured that out earlier, but he honestly hadn't considered that he was actually going to be _paid_. And if they were also giving him a place to sleep and… a piece of wood (he didn't know what the board was for. Maybe the room leaked?), then doing something so boring all day would be worth it. Maybe he could sleep through it? After all, watching over a classroom couldn't be all that hard.

Negi, who had been listening to their conversion silently, leaned forwards to give his own opinion on the matter. "I can understand Naruto-s… Naruto helping the other teachers—I'm certain with them teaching so many classes it must be quite difficult—but I only teach third year English. I don't think I need the help."

"You may not think so," Takahata said, "but you're going to need the help soon. You've shown great dedication as a teacher—both myself and the Headmaster are very proud of you." Negi beamed at the praise. "However, your own studies in magic have declined because of this."

Negi's tea spewed from his mouth as he did a spit-take. "Wh-what did you say?" Negi squeaked. His eyes widened to the size of softballs. "M-magic? Th-th-that's ridiculous!" he said in the most unconvincing way imaginable. Negi's hands shook as he began to wipe away the tea on the table with a napkin.

Naruto snickered. Negi's reaction was hilarious—he was practically vibrating, and his face… Naruto's stomach hurt from trying to keep from laughing. How was this kid supposed to keep a secret?

"He already knows about magic, Negi-kun. You didn't think I would talk about magic in front of a mundane, did you?" Takahata sounded amused.

Negi was quick to reply. "N-no! Of course I don't think that! I just—just didn't think, that's all." The old lady at the counter steadily crushed tea leaves, the quiet grinding sound regular and repetitious. "What about the shop owner?"

"She's the tsukumogami of that pestle over there. Aside from making tea, she also sells herbal medicine and some minor potions. This place is quite popular with the mages, actually—she makes all her tea herself, and there's just always an extra touch to the flavor that normal people or mages just can't quite imitate."

Negi nodded appreciatively, but Naruto didn't get what was so great about it. Tea was tea, wasn't it? It tasted good and was a nice drink, but he didn't think it really mattered apart from that. He did wonder why the old baa-san hadn't come to get their order. Maybe they didn't do that in this world? Not that he had a lot of experience in this sort of restaurant

"Takamichi, I know what you said, and I can see why you said it." Negi looked down at the table. Naruto thought he looked dejected, but when Negi's face rose again his eyes were determined. "I have been giving a great deal of focus to my class, but they hardly deserve less! If anything, I haven't been giving them enough—there are so many students I still don't know very well. As a teacher, aren't I supposed to do everything I can to learn about and support my students?"

The look in Negi's eyes surprised Naruto. He seemed so passionate about teaching. Naruto was impressed—he didn't know people his age could feel like that. The Sage knew there was nothing _he_ was so devoted to.

Maybe this whole 'teaching' thing wouldn't be so bad after all.

"I don't know exactly what Negi's talking about, but if he's a teacher isn't he supposed to do all that?" Naruto knew he wasn't saying anything Negi hadn't, but he didn't want to be left out of the conversation. It sounded important. "At the Academy there were a lot of instructors, but the only one who really taught me anything was Iruka-sensei. The others spent all their time with the most promising students, but Iruka-sensei tried to help everyone in the class. That's the best sort of teacher, right?" Naruto's attention was focused on Takahata, so he missed the sidelong glance Negi sent his way.

Naruto hadn't known why at the time—he thought it might have been because they were playing favorites. They had the students they knew, and focused on teaching them. He knew a couple other students fell through the cracks too, and probably wouldn't ever get to become ninja. He knew better now, of course—they had ignored him because of the fox. But Naruto thought he still had a point.

Takahata's eyes widened as Naruto defended Negi and his teaching. "That's not what I was trying to say at all!" Takahata said, trying to sooth the ruffled feelings. "As I said before, I'm very proud of how you've developed as a teacher, and so young as well. But you can't deny that you haven't been able to devote very much time to studying your magic."

Negi's spirited look faded as the conversation moved to a topic that he knew was true. "I-I admit that I haven't done as much work to becoming a full mage as I used to, but there's always so much to do…"

The look Takahata gave Negi was sympathetic. "I understand, I truly do. That's precisely why I know that you need Naruto-kun's help. With him able to shoulder some of the workload, you'll be able to practice more." A teasing grin crossed Takahata's face. "And perhaps put a little time into finding yourself a Ministra!"

Negi blushed. The pactio with Asuna-san was something he hadn't mentioned to Takahata. He thought he would talk about it in person, but now that the subject came up he found he couldn't force the words out.

Naruto, however, felt annoyed. "So what'll I do? Negi gets to learn to be a wizard, but I don't get a teacher?" He felt like an idiot as soon as the words left his mouth. Of _course_ they couldn't do anything for him—no one here even knew about chakra energy!

"But—couldn't you learn to do magic too?" Negi asked. "I thought you were a mage. If you can't do that, you could at least practice perfecting your chi…"

Takahata shook his head. "Naruto-kun cannot use either magic or chi. It's just not possible for him."

Negi gaped at Takahata. "But—how does he know about magic? I didn't think anyone was supposed to know about magic if they aren't involved with it!" Naruto had no idea how hypocritical the comment was, but Negi blushed as soon as he said it. "Is he someone's Minister Magi?

"Not at all." Takahata shook his head. "He knows about it because it played a major part in him coming here. He, however, uses another power, called 'chakra'. We don't know much about it, but it was commonly used by the people in his world."

The old lady came, holding a platter with three servings of tea in small cups. Naruto looked down at his cup—smaller than he thought it would be. "Takamichi, aren't we supposed to order first? And what's with the tiny tea? I don't think it will last more than a few sips."

The old lady answered, much to his surprise. She hadn't spoken to anyone but Takamichi since they came in, and he hadn't heard what words she said. "I always know what tea is best for you, boy—always. If you come in sad, I know what will make you feel better—come in happy, and I know what teas will let you stay that way. This is all you need."

Naruto was a little freaked out by the old lady. Her eyes saw too much, and they shone with a light that he found rather creepy. And she was a tsukumogami, too… Naruto had thought Takahata was joking around when he said that—youkai weren't real, after all!

But this lady was one. He _knew_ it. The small voice in his head that said things like 'don't jump off the cliff!' or 'don't prank the Anbu!' or 'don't try to take apart the bee hive to get the honey!' told him that he should run. But Naruto didn't listen to that voice very often—he just cowered in his chair.

Spirits were scary. And he'd be damned if he didn't have a very, very good reason to know that.

Takahata and Negi looked at Naruto's fearful reaction to a rather harmless spirit in bewilderment. The tsukumogami however, chuckled. It was an odd sound—like a wispy and airy form of belly-shaking laughter. She withdrew into the back of the shop, still quietly laughing.

"Are you alright?" Concern colored Negi's voice as he stood to check on Naruto.

Naruto looked up at Negi, his eyes darting around wildly. "Y-yeah. She's just… scary. Spirits are scary"

Takahata and Negi sweatdropped. The lady was odd, yeah, but she wasn't even remotely threatening. If he reacted like that to just a tsukumogami… Negi decided to keep Evangeline and Naruto as far apart as possible.

"Takamichi, you said Naruto was from… another world? That can't be possible, can it?" Negi asked, trying to pull the conversation back to a more important topic. "I mean, I've read essays on the subject when I was back home, but there was never any serious discussion that one actually, feasibly existed—for there to be another, with human beings—not an alien planet light-eons away—is… is…"

Negi trailed off without finishing the sentence, a stunned expression on his face. Naruto could sympathize. His stunned expression changed more quickly than Naruto would of have expected, though, taking on a more focused and thoughtful mien.

"The Headmaster was also of that opinion. However, it is undeniable that he is, in fact, from someplace we have never heard of. Even his language is different—he only knows Japanese because he somehow began to understand it when I was halfway through a sentence."

Negi turned to Naruto. "How did you do that?" Negi asked, curiosity making his words come out almost more quickly than Naruto could follow "There's been a lot of work into trying to learn languages through magic, but there hasn't been anything conclusive—they can speed the process, but there has only ever been one good translation spell, and that only works for Latin."

"I already told Takamichi that I don't know, alright!" Naruto snapped. "I went into some weird water, and woke way up on that 'World Tree' thing. I don't know this place, I don't know how I could speak your stupid language, and I don't know I don't know how! So would you all just _stop asking_?"

As he spoke, his volume rose. Didn't anyone get that he _did not know_ what happened? Couldn't they stop with the questions? He had told Takahata so much… more than he had ever told anyone, things that he didn't ever want anyone to know. Wasn't that enough?

By the end of Naruto's sentence he was shouting. His voice rasped—he wasn't used to speaking so much, let alone yelling. He hadn't meant to do that. Negi practically fell over himself apologizing. Takahata, however, frowned. Naruto flinched from his gaze, dropping his eyes to the table.

"I—I'm sorry, I had no idea! Just showing up in another place like that must be stressful—I, I mean, I'm terribly sorry," Negi said, stumbling as he tried to respond.

Now Negi was making him feel bad. "It's fine. I just… overreacted." An uncomfortable silence fell, with either of the two able to find a topic to talk about.

"Where am I supposed to sleep tonight?" Naruto abruptly asked. He was careful to keep his voice down, but even he could hear the contriteness in his voice. He didn't like it. "You brought me to your apartment earlier, but I don't think I should stay the night there. You said this Headmaster guy would let me have a room?"

Takahata scratched the stubble on his chin. "If I remember correctly, room 665 has only one resident, and it was built for two. The Headmaster said you could stay in that one for the time being."

Light shined off of Negi's small glasses as he pushed them higher on his nose. "But that's… isn't that her room? I think we should discuss it with her before we just put her and Naruto together." Negi sounded slightly affronted.

Takahata chuckled. "Still annoyed at the Headmaster for putting you with your roommates without asking you? You can't deny that it worked out well." Negi blushed as he nodded in agreement. Takahata's gaze took in both of the boys before him. "The Headmaster might seem odd at times—particularly when it involves his granddaughter—but he is a shrewd judge of character. Naruto, you'll be meeting him briefly before classes start—but I doubt meeting you in person would change his mind. He already knows who you are, and that is enough for him to know where to put you." Takahata left unsaid that the Headmaster had chosen to put him in that room based on the number of syllables in his name. What he said was true, after all—just not why the Headmaster had chosen that room.

Naruto didn't particularly care about why he got a certain room, or even what room it was. What was important was what Negi had said. "I'm going to have roommates?!" Naruto didn't want to sleep in a room with someone else! His sleeping space had always been his and his alone—even if the orphanage he had a room separate from everyone else's. "I-I can't go to sleep with someone else there. You'll have to put me someplace else."

"I'm afraid that's not possible," Takahata said. "That is the only room available to you right now. I'm leaving soon—you won't be able to stay at my apartment, because it wards itself when I go on trips. The only other option would be where you were sleeping before I found you." The reference to him sleeping on whatever soft object he could find in the garbage and alleyways brought a scowl to Naruto's face.

The comment went completely over the head of Negi, who was quick to chime in with his own support of room 665, citing his student's honesty and integrity as reasons for Naruto to room there. Pressured on both sides, Naruto conceded.

Negi smiled when Naruto agreed. "That's wonderful! I live on the same floor, at the end of the hall. Most of the class does, actually. I can show you there now, if you would like."

Naruto nodded. "Fine. I'll go to your stupid room. But don't expect me to like it." Naruto lifted his teacup to his lips for a final taste. Inches from his lips, he stopped. He didn't feel like having any more—anxiety was making his stomach roil, even worse than it normally did when he talked to other people. He did _not_ want to have to sleep with someone else there. Something bad was going to happen, he just knew it. He set the teacup down, and stood to follow Naruto from the room.

As he stood up, he noticed that his teacup, as well as Negi's and Takahata's, was empty. The old lady had made the exact amount of tea that he had ended up drinking. Naruto felt a cold chill run down his back. He backed away from the table, eager to leave the place as soon as possible.

As he began to leave, movement from the back of the store caught his eye. The old lady, who hadn't been there a moment ago, was standing not ten feet away, looking at him with those strange eyes of hers. Cracked lips opened, and the old lady whispered a word that Naruto didn't know the meaning of. Even so, he fled from the building to wait across the street for Takahata and Negi, and dived into their conversation with a gusto he hadn't shown earlier, eager to do something to forget the old lady.

Particularly that word she had said. He didn't know the meaning of it, and didn't think he wanted to. It sounded ominous in a way he didn't fully understand, and with him lost in another world, that was the last thing he wanted. He silently swore to never go near the shop again—perhaps if he stayed away, he wouldn't get involved with her.

And that strange, frightening word.

"_Jinchuuriki._"

* * *

><p>The night was young, and the moon had only breached the sky a short time ago. The stars glittered in the sky, shedding their dim light over the streets of Mahora. It always amazed Asakura that the night sky was so brilliant and clear here, even when the streetlights should by all rights have hidden the stars from view.<p>

A speckled grey cat crossed the street, mewling plaintively as it stumbled across the pavement. Asakura Kazumi would have bet ten lunch tickets it was the same one Chachamaru had rescued last week—and the week before that, and maybe even the one before that, as well. Its owner really should keep better care of it, she thought.

Asakura crouched down on the pavement, extending her hand for the cat to smell. However, the feline turned away from her with a yowl and darted back into an alley. She couldn't help but snicker as she saw it dart under a trashbin. Maybe the smell would teach it not to turn away from the magnificent Asakura!

'_Although I think Sempai belongs there more than that cat does. He doesn't have much better an opinion of me.'_ Asakura chuckled ruefully as the pushed herself from the cold concrete to her feet. She hadn't meant to be out so late, but one of the older students from the Newspaper Club had asked her out.

The boy had been a foreigner, from someplace in Europe. Even though he had a horrifically thick accent, he had been sweet, and was helpful to the students new to the club. So when he had skimped out on her date at the last minute, leaving her alone at the coffeeshop in her best clothes… well, it had hurt. She had a crush on her sempai for more than a year, and he pushed her away like that?

It wasn't like she wasn't attractive. She got plenty of compliments over her hairstyle—red hair pulled back into her spiky sprawl wasn't something just anyone could pull off, and her figure was ranked fourth in the class!

Her lips curved into a feral grin, causing the few pedestrians out so late to carefully edge around her. He might have skimped out on the date, but there was no way she was going to let him get away with it. She was helping Misaki with her dating article anyways, so it shouldn't be too hard to slip in a few subtle jabs into it.

"Asakura-chan!"

Asakura turned towards the call to see some of her classmates jogging towards her. She smirked at the sight of the cheerleaders—they had obviously just gone shopping, as the piles of bags heaped upon poor Madoka showed. It was hard not to laugh at her when only her short-cropped black hair was sticking up over the bags.

"Gone shopping again Sakurako? I thought you spent all your allowance on food tickets," Asakura said.

Sakurako giggled. She always seemed to be laughing or smiling, although with her luck who wouldn't be? Her orange hair was tied up into two short tails higher up, and in two short braids sticking out past the nape of her neck. "Yeah! But then I bet on the high schooler's dodgeball game, and got it all back!" She waved her hands in Madoka's direction, who moaned under the sheer weight of her load. "We went to the mall to celebrate."

Asakura didn't think Madoka would have gone if she knew she'd be carrying everything Sakurako and Kakizaki would get. She knew she wouldn't have.

"And we must have gone to absolutely every store there. My feet are killing me," complained Kakizaki—she always did prefer to be called by her family name. Pink-lavender hair trailed down her back. Madoka growled from under the trembling tower of bags she carried. "Although I found something particularly nice in the bookstore." Kakizaki reached out to pluck an object from the middle of Madoka's burden.

"You got _The Tale of Genji_?" Asakura stared at the book in Kakizaki's hands, although her gaze kept sliding towards Madoka. "I thought you hated those sorts of old books. You said they were 'stuffy'." The bags in Madoka's arms were beginning to tilt precariously to the left, something the other two-thirds of the cheerleading trio didn't notice.

The collapse of the mountain of goods cut off her attempt to explain, burying the cheerleaders under a pile of bags and boxes. Kakizaki's voice emerged from underneath it. "M-Madoka, you idiot!" Bags shifted as she moved to a sitting position. "What the hell did you drop it for?"

Asakura edged away from the group as Madoka pulled herself from the pile. "Me? Who was it who thought we should go alone this time! Without your boyfriend to carry anything, we—"

"Oh, come on! You're stronger than he is anyways, there's no way you'd fall over under just that much."

"What?!" Madoka's husky voice rose to a point just shy of shrieking. "Are you saying that I'm—I'm _manly_?!" Asakura winced as her usually deep voice hit a particularly high note. There weren't many things that the cheerleaders actually got in fights over, but Madoka's voice (and her complex over it) was one of them.

It only degenerated from there. Madoka and Kakizaki carried on the argument, as usual, often completely misinterpreting what the other said, while Sakurako futilely tried to mollify her best friends, adding more fuel to the fire as she did so. Asakura tried to interject, but was pushed aside each time she did so. A crowd began to grow, attracted by the possibility of a catfight.

It was almost impossible for anything to get between the cheerleader's friendship, and it was just as difficult to get between their arguments. In fact, there existed only one person who was actually capable of such a deed…

"Kakizaki! Kugimiya!"

It was amazing how those two words caused Kakizaki and Madoka to immediately stop fighting when the combined efforts of Sakurako and Asakura had accomplished nothing. Passersby stopped walking at the imperious tone and turned to watch the owner of that voice stalk towards the troublemaking duo.

"C-Class Rep!" Madoka stuttered as she stood at attention. "We were just, well, you know—"

"Practicing!" Kakizaki finished. "For Drama Club."

Asakura facepalmed. _'You do know who you're speaking to, right? Class Rep knows all your extracurriculars already. Even for you that was a stupid excuse._'

"A pathetic excuse!" barked Yukihiro Ayaka, Class Representative of Class 3-A, unknowingly mirroring her classmate's thoughts. "Arguing like that in public, were anyone can see you—you are behaving like children!"

Sakurako pushed herself forwards to stand by her friends, ignoring the growing crowd that gathered to watch the debacle. "But—"

"'But' nothing, Shiina!" Sakurako ducked her head, a motion quickly imitated by the other cheerleaders. "I can't believe you—having a fight the day before we get a new teacher!" Ayaka refused to permit her to get in the way of her lecture. She could be overbearing like that sometimes. "What will he think if the first thing he hears about our class is that we behave like this?"

Asakura hadn't heard anything about there being a new teacher. She frowned—no gossip, no rumor, was supposed to elude her.

"A new teacher?" Kakizaki asked, voicing the unasked question running through everyone's head. "Why do we need a new teacher—I thought we could keep Negi-sensei when we got first place in the exams." She sounded dismayed, and looked the same.

Asakura could sympathize—she didn't want their sensei to leave either! After all the work he put into helping them pass the finals, for him get sent away would just be too much.

Besides, almost half of the articles she had worked on last semester had been about their child-teacher.

Her fears were allayed when the class rep shook her head. "He's not being replaced. How could anyone replace our mature and handsome Negi-sensei?" A dreamy look entered the Class Rep's eyes as she spoke, and she sighed happily. Sakurako, Madoka, and Kakizaki, their argument forgotten, snickered at Ayaka's hopeless and obvious crush. The sound pulled her from her reverie, and Ayaka glared at the cheerleaders for their impertinence before continuing.

"No, our new teacher isn't going to replace Negi-sensei. He's supposed to be an assistant teacher, actually—he's mostly going to do all the boring work for Negi-sensei."

Madoka's brow furrowed. "But Negi-sensei never seems to have any real trouble—I mean, most of his time is spent on us. He can't need a helper already."

Considering that the class he taught was 3-A, Asakura thought that it actually took a lot more work than Madoka gave credit for.

"It's because of his studies, actually," said the class rep. "Poor Negi-sensei has selflessly devoted himself to teaching us, and in so doing has neglected his own learning for our sake." Ayaka pulled a tissue from a pocket of her uniform to wipe the developing tears from her eyes.

Asakura perked up at Ayaka's statement. _Sensei… is still learning?_

But if he was, what would he have to take lessons in? Negi-sensei spoke Japanese so well he hardly had an accent, and she could have sworn he greeted Kū Fei in Chinese the other day. And he knew all the other subjects well enough that he actually managed to get the Baka Rangers to pass their tests (a commendation if she had ever heard one). He already had a job—one he seemed to like, too, and the entire class knew about how he had already graduated from university.

If he already knew so much, then what exactly was their sensei studying?

Ayaka looked around people that had gathered about the group. Now that the fight was over, and the entertainment gone, they had begun to drift away. She frowned as her eyes grazed over the crowd. "I don't know what he looks like, but none of the people here seem like they'd be teachers. At least he would have to see your embarrassment in person."

The cheerleaders, who had obviously hoped their argument had been forgotten, collectively cringed. Ignoring them, Ayaka turned to Asakura. "Do you know where Zazie-san is? Other than the girls working at the Chao Bao Zi, she's the only one I haven't told about the new teacher."

Asakura closed her eyes to focus on class schedules. As the great paparazzi of 3-A, she had of course memorized what classes and clubs her classmates were in. This late, the only actual club active would be the Astronomy Club. Zazie was only involved in the Magic and Acrobatic Clubs, so she should have been in her dorm—that's where she typically spent her time. She wasn't exactly a social butterfly.

'_Come to think of it, wasn't Zazie involved in something else? Not a club, but something related to that_.' Asakura frowned as she tried to remember what it was Zazie was involved in. 'Nightmare Something-Or-Other'.

Nothing came to mind, and the thought soon slipped away from her. Asakura shrugged, and addressed Ayaka, saying, "She should be in her dorm already. How long ago did you check on her? I think practice for the Acrobatics Club ended an hour ago, so she ought to be easy enough to find."

Ayaka covered her mouth as she gasped. "I-I completely forgot about that!" Her hand raised to her forehead as a moan of despair slipped through her lips. "How could I have forgotten? To not know when my own classmate is busy—to neglect her simply because she so rarely speaks up!" Tears began to gather in her eyes as she berated herself.

Asakura sighed. Of all the people to be class representative, did they have to have one so melodramatic? _'Well, I suppose it could be worse—at least Class Rep tries. Some of our other classmates could have been far worse._' She shuddered an errant image of a 3-A represented by Hakase ran through her head—she was quite fond of all her limbs remaining in their place, thank you very much!

"Maybe I could go tell her for you?" Asakura suggested, hoping to get Ayaka moving on before she really got into her theatrics. "You could head over to tell Satsuki and the others." When Ayaka didn't immediately respond, she added, "If you're done quicker, you might be able to see Negi-sensei before he takes a bath. I think I heard Asuna talking earlier today about how she was going to force him into one tonight."

As expected, the Class Rep's reaction was immediate and enthusiastic. She hardly even said goodbye before she ran off. Asakura could only shake her head at Ayaka's obsession.

Catching sight of her classmates slipping off, Asakura was quick to reach out and grab two of them by the backs of their necks. "Hold it, you three!" A quiet whimper escaped Sakurako. "Come with me and we'll talk a bit, shall we?" Despite how it was phrased, Asakura's tone of voice made it clear it was not a request.

The trio of cheerleaders quickly grabbed their bags and fell into step behind Asakura as she walked towards the dormitories. "Didn't you three learn from the last time? What made you think have Madoka carry everything was a good idea?"

"But—come on, Asakura-chan! Madoka's stronger than me and Kakizaki combined, and we've all gone shopping for longer without problems!"

"Ha! You might have shopped for longer, but you sure didn't buy as much. I don't think I've ever seen the two of you hold more than three or four bags each. How many was Madoka carrying?" Asakura didn't turn when she addressed them, and kept her pace brisk.

The cheerleaders hurried to keep up with Asakura, each carrying as much of the fallen goods as they could, which was certainly more than she had ever seen them carrying. When they spoke, it was in a mumble— Asakura couldn't make out exactly what they said, but that didn't matter. She could tell they were feeling browbeaten by their tone of voice, and how they felt about it was more important than what they said.

"Exactly. Maybe next time we should make you carry them all, Kakizaki. Or maybe Sakurako feels tough enough to handle them." Asakura looked at them over her shoulder, and was pleased to see the two leaders of the cheerleading group turn pale. They passed through the doorway into the dorm, which Asakura used as an opportunity to dismiss them. "Go on, all of you. I didn't think you'd get into this sort of trouble again after the last time. You should be glad Class Rep is probably too busy to report this."

Thoroughly berated, the cheerleaders slunk away, figurative tails tucked between their legs. Asakura was relieved this was solved so easily—when the cheerleaders got in trouble, they usually ended up making everyone else in class feel bad too. She was only glad that she remembered some of the speeches Ayaka had given them before—hopefully it would be as effective in deterring trouble as the one she had given had been.

As she approached Zazie's room, Asakura was surprised to find the girl she was looking for appear by her side. She hadn't even noticed Zazie approach.

"Zazie, mind if I talk to you for a moment?"

Zazie Rainyday stopped in front of her door. Her dark skin and light, almost silver, hair made a startling contrast. The tattoos around her eyes—the crescent-like slash crossing her right and the teardrop under her left—only added to her exotic appearance.

"…," she said, tilting her head to the side.

Asakura gave a wan smile, and sincerely hoped that meant 'yes'. "We're getting a new teacher tomorrow, to help Sensei with his job. Class Rep sent me to tell you about it so you'd know."

Zazie nodded. "…"

'_Why is Class Rep never around when we need to talk to Zazie, anyways? She's the only one who knows what she's saying._' Asakura silently wondered why she had actually volunteered to speak to the least talkative member of Class 3-A in the first place.

"Well, just so you know." Asakura didn't dislike Zazie—they had been in the same class for years, and they got along well enough—but that didn't change the fact that her classmate could be seriously creepy at times.

Relieved that she had given the message, Asakura began to head to her room as Zazie entered her own. When she heard Zazie gasp, however, she turned back.

"What's wrong?" Asakura asked as she looked to see what had caused her classmate to be startled. The door to her room was open, and Zazie stood stiff-backed as she pointed into the dark room.

Her room was shrouded in shadow—the only light that could be seen was that which shined in from the opened door. But the light was sufficient to see onto the couch in her room, illuminating what had caused Zazie to actually make noise.

"Zazie?"

"…?"

"Why do you have a half-naked blond boy on your couch?"

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>

Wow, you read all the way to this point? Thank you so much! I really appreciate it.

I know that in the manga, Eva and Negi met after their battle on accident, but I think that Negi, at least, would try to sit down and talk with her afterwards, so their meeting is intentional here.

If you have any questions to ask, or suggestions to make, please don't hesitate to ask it in a review. I try to respond to everyone who reviews the story (if I can respond, that is… I can't reply to an anonymous review).

"-San" isn't exactly formal by Japanese standards (it is used pretty much everywhere, from what I can tell), but to Naruto even that little bit is too much. He's fine with an affectionate honorific like "–kun", though.

I had some references to magical items or creatures here, so I thought I would try to explain where they came from, and their origins. I'm trying to research what I'm doing with this story, so I hope to have a lot of the items and spells have some historic or mythological basis. Not everything can be explained in-story without sounding painfully forced, so I'm taking my cue from Ken Akamatsu's own Lexicon Negimarium, which I think are the most awesome things ever.

**Οἴνος ****Τ****ο****û**** Ἀλήθεια****ς** **Potion**: "Oinos Tou Aletheias" is how it is pronounced. In many cultures across the world, alcohol is considered to induce truthfulness. The Teutons (referring to the Germanic people during the Roman era, as opposed to the Teuton tribe), for example, were known to drink wine during councils, due to the belief that one could not lie well while drunk. Although languages across the world have similar proverbs, two of the most well known (in the Western world) would probably be "in vino veritas", a Latin phrase originating from Pliny the Elder, and "en oino aletheia", a phrase attributed Alcaeus, a Greek poet. Both of these approximately translate to "in wine [there is the] truth". "Oinos tou aletheias" means "wine of truth"—the process of making the potion grants a liquid the truth-telling properties associated with wine. Despite the name, the potion given to Naruto does not actually have any alcohol in it; wine is not actually required for the potion to work—however, Evangeline did previously put wine in the potion, which would be the incident referred to in Chapter Two.

I chose to use "Oino Tou Aletheias" rather than the Latin equivalent because 'potion' is a word of Greek origin. Also—Greek is a horrible, evil language. However, if you have spotted a mistake in my use of it, please tell me.

**Chakra**: The concept of 'chakra' trace back as far as the later Upanishads (ancient philosophical texts of the Hindu religion), such as the Yoga Kundalini Upanishad. Different systems of chakra exist, but in the West the most well known would be to describe chakra as centers of energy located vertically along the body. There are seven major chakras, the Crown Chakra (Sahasrara), Brow Chakra (Ajna), Throat Chakra (Vishuddha), Heart Chakra (Anahata), Solar Plexus Chakra (Manipura), Sacral Chakra (Svadhisthana), and Base Chakra (Muladhara), as well as many minor chakras. Each of these chakras have a different meaning, and to have these in balance is to have balance both physically and spiritually. They distribute prana (life force) throughout the body through pathways called 'nadis' or 'meridians'.

It is easy to so how this chakra and the chakra of Naruto are similar, and how they are different; the concept of having focal points that distribute energy through pathways in the body makes it quite obvious that Masashi Kishimoto was inspired by this chakra in making his own; even so, one can also see they are distinctly different; one an energy, the other locations. However, the form of chakra most prevalent in this story will be that of the shinobi, not that of the yogi or yogini (male or female practitioner of yoga).

**The Book of Melusedek/Melchizedek**: I believe that 'Melusedek' is actually a mistake of the translators. The official translation (the original first volume, not the omnibus) gives the name 'Melusedek', and the scanlation I read to compare it to says "Merkisedek". One might notice that both of these names are similar to the name "Melchizedek", a figure mentioned as the King of Salem and priest to God in both the Old and New Testaments, in the Second Book of Enoch, and in the Dead Sea Scrolls. As Melchizedek is also mentioned at the back of the second volume of the manga, I am referring to the book as that of Melchizedek (I don't know why they say Melchizedek in one place, and Melusedek in another _in the same volume_). The Negima Volume 1 Omnibus uses yet _another_ name, Melchisedech.

**Kraken:** The Kraken is a monster from Norse mythology. The legend almost certainly originated from sightings of real-life giant squid, and the myth simply grew with time. Kraken are typically described as giant squids large enough to sink a ship by themselves; some myths and tales describe them as being significantly larger. For those who are unfamiliar with mythology, a kraken was not, in fact, the creature that Perseus defeated in myth; the kraken is from Norse mythology, not Greek. What he defeated was called 'Ketos', or 'Cetus', a giant whale/giant fish (incidentally, 'cetacean', the order that marine mammals such as whales and dolphins, comes from the word 'cetus'). A kraken attacking Andromeda was either a mistake, or an intentional deviance from mythology for the movie's sake.

**Tsukumogami**: Tsukumogami are a type of obake, shapeshifting youkai of Japanese folklore. obake is a term for any youkai that can shapeshift. A tool that has been of use for 100 years becomes alive and aware, and thus is a tsukumogami—however, they are considered to be spirits and supernatural beings, not enchanted items. They are said to be repelled by electricity, which is the reason that most modern items cannot become tsukumogami. By some stories, only well-cared for objects become Tsukumogami, while in some others it is once-love items that have been abandoned (like much of folklore, it is contradictory at times).

In this story, a tsukumogami coming into existence is a very rare occurrence in comparison to the sheer number of objects in the world—something that is necessary in the story to prevent them from popping up every direction one looks. Not every hundred-year-old item will become one.


	4. Almost Human

I own neither Naruto nor Negima! Magister Negi Magi/Mahou Sensei Negima (take your pick of the name). These are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and Ken Akamatsu, respectively. Likewise, I do not possess any characters from other stories or other mediums of storytelling that may or may not be referenced in this fictional piece.

Thanks to weixuan18 for Beta-reading this chapter.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Four:<strong>

**Almost Human**

The door closed silently behind Zazie as she approached the boy. He was sleeping, and none too happily; he tossed and turned on the couch, and slight moans escaped from his half-opened lips.

He was having a nightmare. Zazie brought the tips of her fingers to her lips and ran her tongue along them. She gently touched the fingers to the blonde's eyelids, closing her own.

What good was a Nightmare Circus without nightmares?

After only a moment's connection, Zazie jerked her hand back, like it had been burned. No expression crossed her face, but even so her eyes welled up with tears as she looked at her hand, and blood dripped from her fingertips onto her clothes. She staggered back from the sleeping boy—who she now knew was Naruto—and to her bed. She whimpered, cradling her hand to her breast as she curled up on top of the sheets.

"It… hurts…"

* * *

><p><em>Winters in Konohagakure were cold.<em>

_Naruto had never understood why they lived in a country named after fire when it could get so cold. But he only did that when he was warm—when he was cold, he couldn't think. When he crouched outside his apartment after being kicked out and shivered as snow fell about his form—when he woke from a pained sleep to find ice improbably sheathing his body—he could hardly think anything at all._

_People were going passed him as he aimlessly stumbled forwards. They were garbed in furs and coats, and their faces were covered by hoods. "Why are you cold?" they seemed to say as they passed him. "A demon can't be cold."_

_He fell away from them onto the snow-covered street. But it wasn't snow, not anymore—it was ice, broken and jagged, and Naruto cried out as his hand cut open upon touching it. The blood that came from it froze as soon as it emerged, turning the sharp pain into a dull and incessant ache._

_Staggering to his feet, Naruto began to lurch forwards again. With every step, the sharp ice slashed at his feet. He tried to scream, but his lips were frozen shut. He didn't know where he was walking, and when he tried to approach the warm, comforting houses lining the streets the doors slammed in his face. _

_Everyone suddenly began to go towards these houses. Naruto reached out towards one, a claw-like hand grasping at a man's arm. "Please," Naruto said, the ice across his mouth cracking and slashing at his face. Tears fell from his eyes, but froze soon after; his eyes were forced open and the ice, like a perfect lens, forced him to watch as the man turned towards him. The hood fell from his face, revealing eyes that were burning red with malice. A mouth far too broad and toothy for a human stretched grotesquely across his—its—face._

_Naruto cried and flung himself from the thing, which merely turned and walked into a house. He ran, as fast as he could. With every step, the ice ripped at him, and the wound froze into a much deeper, inescapable pain._

_The ever-present Hokage Tower loomed over him. Naruto hadn't notice that he had approached it, but now that it was here he knew that this was where he needed to go. He rushed to its door, and the cold fled as he came near to it. The door opened without him needing to touch it, and he fell into the room in relief._

_He was in the Hokage's room, but somehow that he would appear there directly from the front door only made sense. The Hokage himself sat before his desk, his hat falling onto his face as he leaned back in his chair to rest._

"_Jiji! Please, Sarutobi-jiji, the landlord, he—"_

_Naruto fell silent as Sarutobi stood. He straightened his hat, showing Naruto the face that so often comforted him. Naruto rushed forwards to hug the old man, and the old man's bony arms wrapped around him._

_Naruto wriggled inside the Hokage's grip. "That's too tight, Jiji."_

_But the Hokage's arms simply grasped at him harder, crushing him. "You left me to die, Naruto," a soft and pained voice whispered into his ear. Naruto froze. "You ran away, and left me to die." Naruto tried to pull away, but the crushing grip around him wouldn't permit him to._

"_You killed me." The hands of the person Naruto most admired were made of bone as they wrapped around his throat, while the voice in his ear hardly rose above a whisper._

_Naruto struggled to get air to his lungs, to say something, anything to stop this. "J-Jiji—" _

"_Don't say that! The monster who killed me could never call me that!" Sarutobi screamed, spraying spittle into Naruto's face. But it wasn't spittle—it was blood. Naruto could only watch in horror as a great crack appeared on the Hokage's face. Crimson gushed forth, and the crack widened as his face fell away, revealing a blood-covered skull. But the eyes remained, and danced about in madness in their sockets as the skeleton fingers pierced Naruto's windpipe._

"_You killed me!"_

_Dark red fell from Naruto's throat, and as he fell from consciousness he could hear the shadows covering the wall laugh at him. The wild eyes in the skull before him turned red with the blood that began to seep from the ceiling, and the pupils in them turned to angry slits as they glared at Naruto._

"_Demon!"_

* * *

><p>Naruto screamed as he scratched his way to consciousness—or tried to, at least. His windpipe had been pierced through, and all that emerged was a thin and airy whistle, accompanied by the bubbling of his blood.<p>

He rolled off of the couch, the lacerations across his body screaming protests as they rubbed against the fabric. But soon enough, they disappeared—the wounds inflicted upon him by the Kyuubi itself were always far quicker to heal than those he got otherwise.

Trembles wracked his slight frame as Naruto curled up on the floor, wrapping his arms about himself. Even if the injuries were gone, the memories remained—and he still felt so _cold_, like it was seeping into his very bones. He held his eyes open until they watered, afraid that if he closed his eyes he would once again see Jiji's face tear apart.

The sound of encroaching footsteps shook him from his catatonic state. _'I-I can't let them see me like this. I can't!_' He was at that school—the person coming could only be his roommate. Zazie Rainyday, Negi had said her name was. That didn't matter—he couldn't let anyone see him like this, after his dreams.

Naruto couldn't show that sort of weakness. He already had in front of that Takamichi, and that he hadn't suffered for it was a miracle. Letting anyone see him when he was weak was tantamount to suicide.

He couldn't help but groan as he pulled himself up from the ground. A quick glance across the couch and floor showed that there was no blood. Naruto supposed that it was easier to just put the crimson fluid back in his body than it was to make more of it. He couldn't think of another reason there was rarely any of the stuff around when he woke up.

The door creaked open, revealing a girl with skin darker than any he had ever seen before—almost as dark as the people of Kumogakure were said to be. Her hair was wet, and clung about her head and shoulders in long silver strands, brushing against her uniform. A damp towel was draped over her shoulder.

"…?"

'_What… did she just say something?_' Naruto gave a wan smile at who he could only assume was Zazie Rainyday. Negi had said she wasn't very talkative, but wasn't this sort of extreme?

Naruto didn't know how to respond to her, so he decided to just ignore whatever she just did. "I tried to look for you yesterday, but I didn't know how to find you. My name's Uzumaki Naruto! I'll be your new roommate for now on." Naruto tried to make his smile look more natural. He didn't want to make an enemy of the person he would be living with, even if it was only until he could find a way out of staying in the dorms.

He gave a half-bow. "Please take care of me." It had been surprising to find that introduction was used here in Japan, even if it did have different words. But relieving, too, even if it wasn't something he had any experience using.

Zazie closed the door behind her as she entered the room. Naruto didn't think that she looked much happier with the idea than he did. Her face didn't change at all as he spoke—although from what Negi and Takamichi had said she might always look like that.

"…Zazie…" If Naruto's hearing had only been at the level of a normal human's, he would never have heard her. Her lips hardly moved, and her voice was so soft and quiet that even he could hardly hear her speak her name.

'_What an odd girl,_' Naruto thought as she turned away, seemingly finished speaking after only a single word. The silence was awkward, although Naruto seemed to be the only one who thought so; Zazie didn't seem to be phased in the least. '_Why is it that it feels so uncomfortable to not say anything? I never felt like I had to speak to anyone when I was back in Tanzaku._' Perhaps Negi and Takamichi were to blame for this, engaging him in their damnable conversations for so long.

The dark-skinned girl tossed the towel on her shoulder into a basket of what Naruto assumed were dirty clothes, although he didn't think they looked very filthy at all. Maybe he didn't know her very well, but he didn't think she was dangerous—although something was just plain weird about her. He could _feel_ it somehow, in his gut.

Naruto, caught up trying to determine what was so wrong about her, almost didn't notice Zazie pick up a bookbag. Almost being the key word—as she grabbed it, he felt the blood drain from his face. He was supposed to meet with the Headmaster today! His eyes darted towards the wall as he looked for a clock, his features pale.

He couldn't afford to mess up here! He had an actual bed here, and he could get food; if he messed this up then… Naruto shook his head to clear his mind of such thoughts. They didn't do him any good.

Naruto finally found the clock, hung on the wall above her bed. At least, he thought it was a clock—it didn't look like any he had ever seen! It had two arms, and only went up to the number twelve. Twelve! How was he supposed to know what time it was on such a bizarre-looking clock?

He had to go. He didn't have any idea if he was late or not—their freakish clocks had two arms, so he hadn't the slightest idea what time it actually was. Naruto spun about to leave, but a quiet cough stopped him. "What?" Naruto asked as he turned around to look at her, the irritation in his voice obvious. "Look, I've really got to leave! I'm supposed to meet with somebody now." Well, Naruto didn't actually know if he was supposed to meet them at that minute, but it was as good a guess as any.

Zazie simply pointed at him. He cocked his head to the side in confusion. What did she want? He had already introduced himself, and he didn't think that there was anything else that was important when you met someone new. Maybe his clothes were messy? He looked down—and immediately saw the problem.

He was still in his pajamas. Naruto's face burned with embarrassment that he had forgotten that he was still wearing them. He had even introduced himself with them on! If he had worn these to meet with the Headmaster, he might have gotten thrown out!

He looked around, but his clothes were nowhere in sight. Naruto looked at Zazie, and tried to ask if she knew where they were—she knew the room better than he, after all. He had collapsed on the couch as soon as he had arrived. But before he could say anything, she raised a slender arm to point towards a small dresser.

As Naruto pulled a drawer open, he was surprised to find his clothes neatly folded within. He only remembered flinging them off before he fell onto the couch. Speaking of which… when had he changed into pajamas? He didn't even remember bringing the pajamas over with him, so how did he get in them?

Naruto quickly dismissed such information as unimportant as he pulled out his clothes. He was struck by how empty the small piece of furniture was. Having an entire drawer dedicated to a single set of clothing was a waste, and Naruto couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for the dresser, built to hold things but with hardly anything to do. It reminded him a little bit of his wallet—poor Gama-chan was usually just as empty. Inanimate objects had it rough.

Naruto pulled off the top of his pajamas, but as he had it halfway off he remember something that was ever so slightly important. There was a girl in the room!

He blushed a deep red as he yanked his top back down. Naruto silently thanked every god that existed that Zazie was busy putting her schoolbooks into her bag. Gathering his clothes, he quietly slipped into the restroom to change.

* * *

><p>"Did you hear about the new teacher, Asuna?"<p>

Kagurazaka Asuna rolled her eyes at the inane statement. "Of course I did! Jeez, Konoka, you were with me when she told us."

Konoe Konoka giggled. "Yeah, but you were busy ogling Takahata-sensei when Class Rep came to tell us about it."

"I-I wasn't ogling him! I w-was—I'm painting him in Art Club, and I was just checking—"

"Just checking out his body?" Konoka finished, smiling innocently.

Asuna's cheeks flushed pink at Konoka's insinuations. "That's not it!" she shouted in embarrassment—an embarrassment that only grew as everyone else running to class stared at her.

The daily dash to school at Mahora was an incredible thing to see. Thousands upon thousands of students and hundreds of teachers rushed to get to their assigned classrooms, while the food stands lining the routes to school called out to the hungry students. It was a massive flood of people—and even running as late as Asuna and Konoka tended to, there was more than enough of a crowd to make Asuna's blush reach a remarkable shade of crimson.

She was thankful Negi wasn't here—she would have died if he had been here to help Konoka's teasing. She would have just _died_. After she killed him, of course.

Speaking of which... "Hey, Konoka," Asuna asked, turning her head to look at the other girl as she ran, "where'd Negi get to? I didn't see him back at the dorm."

"Negi-kun had to go to the school early today to fill out some papers for my grandfather. You had already gone out to your part-time job by then," said Konoka. Her skates rasped against the pavement as she rolled beside Asuna. Asuna had once thought the repetitive sound was annoying, but she had gotten used to it.

Like she had gotten used to Negi, come to think of it.

"Humph. Figures that the old geezer would give a kid work before class even starts." Asuna had wanted to talk to him before class started, too—but if he was busy then she wouldn't get the chance.

Asuna noticed that she was just barely starting to pull ahead of Konoka, and slowed down to match her speed. She really needed to ask Negi what else happened with that Pactio thing. Ever since they performed the Pactio—something that she still couldn't think about without flushing red—she'd felt better than she remembered ever feeling before. She'd almost blown past Konoka when they headed out the door this morning, and she finished her paper route so quickly that she had to wander around town so it wouldn't look suspicious when she came back early.

Konoka nudged Asuna with her elbow to get her attention. "What's that kid doing here? Wasn't the stop for the elementary school a stop before here?

The boy in question was only fifteen feet ahead of them, dressed some one of the most jarringly orange clothing Asuna had ever seen. She didn't understand how she hadn't noticed him already—it felt difficult to pull her eyes away from that painfully orange shade of… orange. The only reason she even noticed his gold-yellow hair was because it was as vibrantly colored as his clothing.

Konoka started to pull away from Asuna to go over to the boy, but Asuna grabbed her by the arm before she could get far. "Just let the kid go. He probably has to see the Headmaster. Remember when we were in elementary?"

Konoka giggled. "Hope his grades aren't as bad as yours were back then." Asuna glared at her roommate, something that Konoka was, as usual, completely unaffected by. It didn't help that Konoka had a point about the grades; Asuna was doing positively marvelous now compared to elementary school.

"Funny Konoka, really funny. C'mon, let's get to class." Asuna began to go faster, forcing Konoka to push herself to keep up, even in her roller skates. Konoka wasn't as fit as she was and Asuna bet that she'd be a bit sore by the time they got to the school building. She'd have to think of something scathing to tease Konoka about later.

It was hard to focus on that though, what with all the thoughts of the new teacher. Maybe Takahata-sensei would be coming back? That would be perfect, but even Asuna had to admit that it wasn't going to happen; Class Rep would have just said that sensei was returning, rather than saying they would get a new teacher. Why were they getting a new teacher? Negi came back late last night, and didn't have time to say very much before going to sleep. Did the Headmaster decide that Negi wasn't good enough to handle it by himself, or was this just to make things easier for someone who was, in the end, only ten years old?

A quiet cough caused Asuna to glance to her far left. She was surprised to see Chao Lingshen, the usually punctual student, running as late as she and Konoka did—and she looked a bit ill, too. Asuna wondered if it had something to do with how upset she got when Class Rep told her about the new sensei. She had no idea that Chao was so fond of Negi; she had shut down Chao Bao Zi for the day as soon as she was told about it, and Asuna had never seen her look so disturbed before.

Asuna and Konoka soon passed her, just as Izumi Ako pulled up beside Chao. The nurse's assistant was doubtlessly going to bug Chao about her health, something that didn't surprise Asuna in the least. Ako was always trying to help others out, and with Chao sick of all people, it would be more of a surprise if Ako didn't badger her into visiting the nurse's office.

'_Honestly, since when does mad scientist _Chao_ get sick? I think this is the first time I've seen her so much as cough the entire time she's been in 3-A. I bet it's because she goes to that Chinese Medicine Club all the time.'_

"Asuna, did you see what happened to that kid? I didn't see him leave," said Konoka, a frown upon her face (well, as much of a frown as Konoka could manage, which isn't much of one). Asuna turned to look behind them, as they should have already passed him by now, but didn't see him anywhere.

Come to think of it, she didn't remember going pass him at all. Which she should have; that shade of orange wasn't something she could just ignore, no matter how hard she tried, like some sort of eye-magnet. "He probably just got off at the wrong stop, and decided to go back to the train," Asuna said.

Konoka looked unsure, but didn't respond as they reached the stairs to the school proper. Asuna didn't think that she was correct though, even if she was the one that said it. The boy had looked like he knew where he was going, and there was just something about him.

Perhaps he was…

No. No, of course he wasn't. After all, they already had Negi in their class—surely one child-teacher was enough for the school. The bells in Asuna's hair rang as she shook her head to rid herself of the thought. It was a ridiculous one, after all.

There was no way that kid was going to be their new sensei.

* * *

><p>"Hello, my name is Uzumaki Naruto, and I am going to be your new sensei. Please take care of me."<p>

SLAM!

The sound of Asuna bashing her head against the table resounded throughout the classroom.

* * *

><p>Danzō, Godaime Hokage, stood statue-like within the headquarters of Root as he looked upon the unmasked member before him. He had not spoken since the agent had entered the room, and he was pleased that the shinobi had not moved from his kneeling position the entire time, or looked anywhere but straight ahead after entering the room. His concerns of the agent losing his touch while undercover had been baseless after all.<p>

At last, Danzō stirred, rising from his seat of stone to address his shinobi. "You have gone by the name of 'Sai' during this assignment." It was not a question, yet his voice demanded a response. His stony gaze stared into Sai's black eyes, as though attempting to stab into the shinobi's soul.

"That is correct, Danzō-sama." Sai's voice was almost completely absent of emotion, colored only by the tinge of his dry humor. Danzō was pleased by this; it had taken effort to add that small hint to his voice, to make him sound more ordinary. Learning to act as though one had emotions was necessary for Root members infiltrating an enemy organization.

"Stand and come with me. I have a temporary assignment that requires your expertise." Sai rose to his feet without comment, and followed Danzō as the leader of Konohagakure strode down the rock hall. The torchlight flickered as they walked down the hallway, until Sai raised his voice in question.

"It was unusual to be told by my handler to come back. I had been told that my mission would continue for much longer. If I disappear for a great length of time, I may be unable to return to my current trusted position."

Danzō turned his head to stare into Sai. "You will not be gone for long. They ordered you to retrieve supplies for their rebellion, correct?" At Sai's nod, he continued. "This mission will be a short one. I will give you the necessary provisions immediately upon its conclusion."

"But Danzō-sama, would that not simply further empower the rebels? They are already a threat as it is." The sound of Sai's voice did not change, but Danzō could tell that his agent was concerned over the decision. But he did not see the big picture as Danzō did; that was why he was the Hokage, why he led Konohagakure.

"Perhaps it will, but if you do not give them the supplies they will simply find them elsewhere. Handing them over will put you further in their good graces, which in turn gives you access more important information." Danzō watched as Sai nodded, but he was certain that his shinobi continued to feel disturbed. No one else would have noticed it, but Danzō had perfected the Root training program that the Nidaime Hokage had begun. He had made his Root agents what they were, and they were as open books to him.

"You said that they already posed a threat. Elaborate," Danzō ordered. He had, of course, read the reports Sai had sent, but he had been brought in several days before his next report was due; had the situation changed to make them more dangerous since then? They had been a concern before, yes, but not truly a threat.

Sai cleared his throat before beginning. "The Konoha rebels have contacted Kumogakure. I have heard nothing of the results, or even if they achieved any, but Hatake Kakashi and Morino Ibiki spoke with several ambassadors from Kumo for several days. Other shinobi were not permitted to approach the pavilion from which they conducted the negotiations, and I was unable to reach them with my ink techniques."

"An unfortunate alliance, should it reach its conclusion." Although it could be used for his advantage, should they truly become allies. The rebels were by and large composed of missing-nin; should Kumogakure align themselves with them, it would provide him with the perfect excuse to commence invasions into Kumo. No other nation would be able to call foul play, which could avert another Great Shinobi World War.

"What was their involvement in the disappearance of the jinchuuriki? There were shinobi present beyond those that I sent. Do you have names?"

"The leaders of the rebellion discovered the location of Uzumaki Naruto shortly before you began your operation to retrieve him. A small group of ninja—no more than two or three teams—were sent to locate him and bring him in, doubtlessly to use him as a weapon against you." Danzō watched in silence as Sai attempted to remember more details. Further memory training would be necessary before he returned to his undercover assignment. "No important shinobi were sent on the mission; they believed that the jinchuuriki would be easily obtained, and did not send any shinobi of appreciable skill, lineage or renown. However, I do not know who went for the retrieval."

Danzō frowned. "A foolish mistake," albeit an understandable one, Danzō thought. '_Especially since the negotiations of those traitors with Kumogakure are not concluded; should they chose not to join forces, Kumo may attempt to capture the rebels to improve their relations between us_.' If that were the case, then keeping a strong force would improve the probability of a successful alliance between rebels and Kumo. It would do them no good to obtain the jinchuuriki if they had no forces to wield it.

There was one last thing he needed to know before they reached their destination. "Do they know anything about how it disappeared?"

"No. They know that he was not captured, but not know how he escaped, nor do they know his current location."

The grim look on Danzō's face showed nothing of his relief to find that his worries were groundless. So they did not have a high-ranking spy in Konohagakure as he had feared. If they had, they would surely have learned about the _Lacus ad Orbii Alii_, and would already be hunting for a second of those miraculous pools, as he was.

"How ironic," Danzō whispered with a voice too low to hear, "that the scroll you found would allow me to capture the jinchuuriki. Your actions have again resulted in your loss, Sarutobi." It was rare that Danzō permitted himself time to reminisce, but the rest of the walk was done in silence.

Danzō held up a hand to signal Sai to stop, for they had finally arrived. Before them stood a metal door, unbarred and covered in lightly glowing seals. He gave a satisfied nod; the light was a signal to show that the one within had not left the room. Danzō reached out to open the door, but the door slid open before he touched it. As he expected, considering who resided within.

The girl in front of him had always been slender and waif-like, but the days without sleep or food during her vigil had made her seem almost fragile. Her long black hair hid her face as she knelt before him.

"Stand, kunoichi of Root." The girl rose to her feet, her hair parting to reveal veins bulging around pearlescent eyes. "It is time for a mission. You will take the name 'Hanabi' for the remainder of the operation."

Itachi's slaughter of the Uchiha clan had an unexpected secondary benefit. The Hyūga had seen similarities between one of their own and the Uchiha's prodigy. They were fools, of course; a child as young as Hanabi had been was incapable of decisions like that, but her own natural talent had scared the elders of her clan. They wanted to be rid of her; Hiashi could always find another wife and produce another child.

When Danzō had offered to take her off of their hands, the panicked council of Hyūga elders handed her over with hardly a second thought, all to Danzō's benefit. It was only later that they realized what they had done to their clan, and how little political influence they now had. They gave him an unmarked female of the main branch; with Orochimaru's assistance, her ova could be extracted and used to recreate the entire clan as Danzō desired. The Hyūga could be replaced now, and they were willing to do whatever he desired in order not to be. Hiashi had opposed it from the beginning, but once his only living daughter was in Danzō's hands there was nothing he could do but to obey.

He had molded her into a warrior of Konohagakure, as every shinobi and kunoichi in the village ought to be. "Two days have passed without food, water, or sleep, and your Byakugan has been active the entire time." It was not a question, and she responded accordingly, staring blankly ahead as she awaited orders. "You will rest for a day before heading out on your mission. Bring soldier pills to make up for whatever inefficiency you may have from your vigil."

Hanabi's veins receded as she deactivated her doujutsu. "I will not be impaired from only this level of strain, Danzō-sama," she responded. Her voice was hollow and emotionless; his training had served her well.

"Very well. Sleep now, for tomorrow you will go on the mission. Sai will accompany you," Danzō said, waving a hand towards the silent agent at his side, "and will inform you of the details of your assignment en route." The small girl stepped back into her room and slid the door shut. Silent and efficient, as she had been taught.

Danzō turned to his subordinate. "As she will need all the rest she can get until the mission, I will leave her debriefing to you. The two of you are to hunt down and she is to kill the jinchuuriki of the Yonbi no Saru, known as Rōshi of Iwagakure. Details about his abilities, and those of his demon, are waiting in your room."

"She is still a child. I doubt she's older than the Uzumaki boy is. Is she actually capable of defea—" Sai would have continued, but was cut off by Danzō.

"You question my decision?" Danzō asked, his voice quiet, but inundated with barely restrained violence. Sai quickly shook his head in the negative, shying away from Danzō's glare. After the affair with the jinchuuriki and the rebels was over, perhaps he would need to be… corrected. He did not tolerate questioning from his tools. "She is uniquely suited for this mission, as no other agent of Root could be. _Never_ assume that I make a mistake again, or you will be replaced."

Sai nodded, restraining an instinctive urge to shudder before the killing intent oozing from the leader of Root. "U-uniquely suited, Danzō-sama? How so?"

"She is a Hyūga. We have trained her to look past the chakra network, and directly strike the connections between host and demon. We have had few subjects to work with, but Hanabi has successfully separated host and demon in each case." Danzō turned to stare into one of the torches as he remembered the process. Actually being in a demon's presence, even a weaker one, had not been pleasant. "Once this is done, the demon will be set free, killing the host unless the connection between the two is weak."

Looking Sai in the eye, Danzō continued. "Once the demon has been set free, but before it can fully materialize, Hanabi is to seal it within an object. Hanabi's sealing lessons have not been intensive, but she is able to replicate an existing seal easily enough. You are to bring the container with the bijuu back to Konohagakure."

Sai showed emotions that he was not supposed to, again displaying concern. Danzō did not let his disapproval cross his face. Retraining was necessary before he was permitted to return to his undercover assignment; he would schedule it as soon as Sai returned from this mission. "How will we bring it back? I know little of seals, but I doubt any object could contain the Yonbi for long."

"Hanabi has been given four containers to place the demon in, each specially prepared to hold the Yonbi for as long as possible. She will doubtlessly go through all of them returning it here. I will have a child prepared to seal it into when you return." Whose child, however, he had not yet decided.

The mission would be a short one, so any newborn may be sufficient to contain the beast. Perhaps the newest Sarutobi would be best; Sarutobi (formerly Yūhi) Kurenai would give birth soon, and Danzō thought that Asuma suspected his role in Hiruzen's death. Making Asuma's child into a jinchuuriki would provide him with an additional hold over him, and his loyalty would not be permitted to waver. Perhaps he would even let them visit their child, should they do well in their missions.

He turned his attention back to his subordinate. "We used what was left of your stash of special inks to paint designs over her body. We have not yet had the time to imprint her with the Root seal, so you will be sent along with her to ensure that she does not attempt to run or reveal information about Root."

"Is this a common problem? Would it not be better to wait until she is fully loyal to Root?"

Danzō scoffed at the notion. "No one is permitted out of this building unless they are 'fully loyal to Root'. She occasionally suffers from flares of anger, but she is still young. No, you are there simply for the worst case scenario."

Danzō left unsaid that he was not certain that a demon as powerful as a bijuu could be completely restrained by the seal-covered boxes given to Hanabi. The Yonbi had been known to actively possess humans before, immediately after being let out of a prison. Should it choose to do so Sai would be able to kill Hanabi's body easily, as she would already be covered in his ink. Then its rampage would be in Iwa's territory; regardless of the outcome, the result was in his favor. If it remained in the kunoichi, her mind may influence it into choosing to attack Konoha, even if only because she was loyal to it. There was no end to the spite of demons.

"Return to your quarters. You will need to read the scroll within to learn about the fighting style of the Yonbi's jinchuuriki."

Sai bowed. "Forgive me, Danzō-sama, but if you used my ink stores I will need to get to get supplies to make more, or I will be of little use during the mission."

Danzō simply walked away, granting permission through his silence.

* * *

><p>Sai was surprised by how little Konoha had changed in his absence. In the rebel's camp it seemed that there were drastic changes on a weekly basis. Moving to new camps, rearranging the present ones for new volunteers; always new. It seemed that villages were much more stable.<p>

He didn't think that he would remember how to get around the city again so quickly after returning, but soon enough his feet were leading him to his contact.

Kakashi-sensei's instruction had been harsh, but Sai was glad for it now. Without Kakashi's chakra tricks, Sai doubted he would have been able to pick up what Danzō-sama—'_no, not Danzō-sama, not anymore. Simply Danzō_'—had said. Perhaps it meant nothing... but he suspected it was important, too important to let get away.

He could afford to take risks now; no doubt Danzō-s—_Danzō_ had noticed that his conditioning was slipping. Sai needed to do what he could before Danzō decided he was a liability and either killed him or subjected him to reconditioning. That last option would be much worse, because if he was dead he couldn't hurt anyone; if he once again became a puppet of Root, the rebellion would suffer, and he could not permit that.

'_I will need to mention what may happen to me in my report to Kakashi-sensei,_' Sai thought. It would be best if their leader knew that he would probably be his enemy after this mission if he still lived. Surprises like that were rarely conductive to a long lifespan, and Sai wished for his sensei to have a very long one indeed.

Sai gave an absentminded nod to two patrolling Anbu, his mind focused elsewhere. Specifically, on that Hyūga girl Danzō had in his control. _'This will not make Hinata-san happy at all. Particularly if she actually _is _her sister. I do not envy her the pain of fighting her own sibling.'_

Another thing he would have to inform Kakashi about. Even if they obtained the Uzumaki boy, if the Hyūga was able to nullify a jinchuuriki then they would need to take care to keep the two far from one another. Perhaps Hinata could be taught the same technique—it would make any headway Danzō gained towards reclaiming Uzumaki Naruto less of a loss for those truly loyal to the ideals of Konohagakure.

A warm and homey scent wafted by Sai's face. He must have arrived there already; he should have been more alert. He silently made note of his lapse, for later analysis and correction. If he lived long enough to correct, that is.

"Hello, welcome to Ichiraku Ramen! What can I get you today?"

Sai smiled at the elderly man. There was no one else in at the moment—that was good. "I heard that your Konohagakure Special was worth trying, so I came to see what it is like. How much is it?"

Sai was impressed at how little Ichiraku Teuchi reacted. He wouldn't have noticed Ichiraku's shock if he hadn't been looking for it. Old age must have taught him a thing or two, even if he didn't have any ninja training. "For a shinobi of Konoha, it's free. Just give me a moment to whip it up for you, and you'll be full in no time." The old man walked to the back of the shop to cry out to his assistant. "Ayame! We'll need extra fishcake for a Konohagakure Special!" There was a crashing sound from the back of the shop. Sai supposed that the girl was more reactive than her elder was.

Ichiraku was quick and efficient, as expected, and Sai's ramen was ready in short order. Sai took no particular pleasure in the act of eating and this ramen was no different, although he could tell it was well made. Food was of secondary import at the moment. "I heard your daughter was leaving soon to travel the world before taking over your shop." He gave one of his false smiles to the ramen chef as he spoke. "That is a noble thing to do, learning more about the world before settling down. But are you sure it is safe her to leave? There are bandits, highwaymen—even rebels! It would be horrible if they got their hands on her."

Concern flashed in the old man's eyes at Sai's words. Sai didn't understand the cause behind it—concern for family, perhaps? Such things were beyond his understanding. Even so, Ichiraku's voice didn't waver as he responded. "It would be more dangerous to leave her here. I've seen boys sneaking into her room at night, and I don't trust the kids around this part of town."

Sai let his eyebrows rise to show his 'surprise'. "Oh? When does this happen? If it is at night, wouldn't the patrolling shinobi catch these boys?"

"It's just after curfew. The patrols aren't as heavy then, so someone can sneak in and out with none the wiser."

He stood to leave, but decided to give the old man some helpful advice before he left. One good turn deserves another, after all. "If paying for an escort is too much for a chef's wages, perhaps you could speak to the Akamichi clan? I heard that they often provide aid to those in the food industry in need. One of their own recently came back from a mission, in fact—Chōji by name. He may be able to ensure that your daughter is protected on her trip."

Sai gave Ichiraku another meaningless smile as he walked away, heading towards the Hokage's Tower. He would need to visit Ichiraku Ayame at curfew then. Akamichi Chōji would be able to guide her safely to a rebel pick-up spot, where she could give Kakashi-sensei his report. His last report.

It briefly crossed his mind to join her, to escape from the village, but Sai quickly dismissed the thought as foolish. It was one thing for a young chef escorted by an Akamichi to leave; a member of Root was something else entirely. Leaving would be particularly foolish now; Danzō had gift-wrapped a weapon against the jinchuuriki he was hunting.

It would be impolite not to take advantage of that and kill her when she was so neatly presented.

But there would be ample time for that during the mission. Before then, he needed to research. Danzō had spoken of a scroll—or at least, Sai thought that he had. With such a quiet voice it was difficult to tell. From the context in which he spoke of it, Sai had little doubt that it was connected in some way to the disappearance of Uzumaki Naruto.

Sai strode purposefully past the guards on each side of the entrance to the Hokage Tower. If he would find the information anywhere, it would be within the Hokage's secret library. In retrospect, it would have been better for Danzō to have sent a different agent to sneak in there to confront Mizuki all those years ago. Sai doubted that Danzō had considered how it would come back to hurt him.

Shortly before reaching the Hokage's office, Sai ducked into an empty room. It was used for filing minor papers, those not important enough to be classified. It wasn't frequently visited, making it the perfect location for his purposes.

He reached into the pouch by his side to pull out a small scroll. A quick motion and it was unraveled, showing one of his incomplete pieces. A simple outline of a man, it awaited completion. Sai pulled out a brush and a small vial of his ink, but paused before brush touched paper.

Sai closed his eyes, dredging forth every detail he could remember from his recent visit with Danzō. The way the bandages covered his body, the thickness and wildness of his hair, the faint bulge of muscle visible even beneath his clothing—no facet of Danzō's features could be forgotten.

Brush slid across the scroll as he opened his eyes. He moved quickly and precisely; imitating the form of another through ink techniques was far more elaborate than a mere Henge, and required finesse and precision. Every thirty seconds he paused to glance towards the door—he couldn't afford to be caught here.

There had been one close call, but the stacks of paper in the room were high enough that he could safely duck behind one. Completing the work to his satisfaction took the better part of half an hour, but it was finally finished.

Sai placed the scroll upon the ground before clasping his hands together. He took a single long and deep breath, before his hands began to blur through the hand seals to the jutsu he created with Kakashi-sensei. Eyes closed, he reached out towards the portrait with his chakra; it resonated, as it ought, and he channeled his will into it as the jutsu reached its completion.

"_Sumi Henge no Jutsu_!" Sai whispered under his breath. Chakra-inundated ink poured from the scroll to envelop his body. For a brief moment, he appeared as a black-and-white picture brought to three dimensions; only a second later, he clasped his hands together into the last seal of the technique. His form rippled as it gained color and realism, until at last his appearance was that of Danzō.

Were he cloaked in a normal Henge, the Root guards protecting the library might have discovered him; but the Sumi Henge was far superior to a mere illusion. He would get in.

Sai stepped out of the room, careful to put the slightest hint of a limp into his stride as the Godaime Hokage did. If all went well, the rebellion would learn where to find Naruto within the week.

* * *

><p>"Where are you from?"<p>

"From, uh—"

"Do you die your hair?"

"No, it's—"

"Wow, are those whiskers tattoos?"

"Oh, well, um—"

"How did another kid become a teacher? I bet you're really smart!"

"What—"

Naruto was rapidly being backed into a corner by the merciless onslaught of the students of Class 3-A. They looked somehow… hungry. Did the teachers here feed them properly? What did schoolgirls eat, anyways? He couldn't help but notice there were only thirty students here—what did they do to the other ones?

He was saved by Negi. "E-enough! Naruto-sensei doesn't need you crowding him on his first day!" 3-A being 3-A, he was of course ignored. Coming in right after the field trip to Kyoto and Nara was announced might not have been a smart move. "You'll scare him away!"

More drastic measures were needed. "Pop quiz!"

It was incredible how two simple words can quell even the most ferocious and wild of classes. Naruto watched in amazement as the girls scurried—the most fitting word he could find—back to their desks. He sighed in relief when his personal space was, once again, his.

Had he been like that in school? Iruka was a saint. A genuine saint.

"Naruto-sensei, would you hand these out to the class?" Negi asked, holding out a thick sheet of papers—the quizzes, Naruto would assume. He sighed as he grabbed the papers from Negi's hands and began to walk down the aisles, trying to ignore the whispered questions from the students.

When he completed his task he returned to the front of the room to stand behind Negi, who again had something for him. "This is the class roster—please try to remember all the students names."

Naruto took the folder from the other boy and flipped it open. Ah—so there were thirty-one students, not just thirty. Two of them looked like they were twins—must have been because of that. Although he did notice one small problem as he looked through the folder.

He didn't know how to read Japanese.

Naruto forced a smile on his face as he occasionally glanced up from the pictures before him to the class, trying to make it at least _look_ like he was trying to connect names with the students. What would he do now? He couldn't read more than a few words in the first place, how was he supposed to learn Japanese? What good was a teacher who couldn't read?

He shuddered at the thought of the Headmaster finding out about it. There was no way he'd be able to keep this job if the Headmaster knew that his sudden understanding of Japanese hadn't spontaneously taught him how to read.

It would be best if he could hide that little tidbit of information, but Naruto doubted that he could keep something like not being able to read hidden in a school, of all places. He cast a glance towards Negi, who, armed with red ink, was waging furious battle with his students' homework.

Negi seemed trustworthy enough, although they had only had met yesterday. Naruto normally wouldn't even think about approaching someone else about something this important, but this was a whole new world. There was no Root here, no Anbu. No one was hunting him here.

What a peculiar idea—that he would not have to hide anymore. He felt laughter well up, but squashed it before he began to laugh like a madman before the class.

No one was trying to capture him. What a strange thought. Perhaps things were finally going to start looking up.

* * *

><p>"The alterations have been completed then, Kabuto?" a voice whispered, a hardly audible sound emerging from the bandage-wrapped figure upon the bed.<p>

The white haired medic looked up from his work as he carefully removed the last IV from his lord's body. "This is the last injection, my lord. But please, do not strain yourself! Your body won't complete the changes for days, and even then it will take weeks for you to fully acclimatize to the—"

"Do not lecture me, Kabuto." Orochimaru of the Sannin pulled himself into a sitting position as he spoke. Dark and sibilant, his voice seemed to violate the very air it moved through. "I created the Fushi Tensei, and I have been in enough new bodies to know the limits of the transfer." The menace layering his voice was unmistakable, and Kabuto made no reply as he set to work.

Orochimaru smirked as Kabuto shied away from him even as he pulled the bandages from his lord's form. Each layer of cloth removed showed more skin—pure, white, and pristine flesh, carefully grown over the original skin of this body.

"Orochimaru-sama, does it still work? We haven't tested the chemically induced changes on this manner of kekkei genkai—we might have altered the body's chakra pathways too greatly for it to work." He found the false concern in Kabuto's voice amusing.

"Kukuku… you sound so worried, Kabuto! Did you not think to question that possibility _before_ the transfer?" He laughed aloud as the medic's face grew pale. "Fortunately, I am more farsighted that you seem to be. I altered the solution beforehand—no precaution is too great to ensure that this body transfer was successful in every way."

He pulled his hand into a fist when Kabuto finally freed it from its restraints. Too weak—he had trained his host well, but it was not equal to his previous one physically. A danger, he supposed, of taking on a young and inexperienced human as a host. But he could not afford to wait—Danzō may foolishly believe Uchiha Itachi to be a loyal servant, but Orochimaru refused to believe that the damned Uchiha would be content serving one such as the leader of Root. That accursed Tsukuyomi was too great a danger to not take steps to counteract.

But now… now, Itachi would be unable to oppose him and survive. A feral smile crossed his face as he ran chakra through his body. The pain he felt did not deter him; every new body tried to reject his chakra in the beginning. It was merely an unfortunate side-effect of his immortality. A sharper pain brought his attention to his arm, where the seeping blood showed that the symbol of his contract with the Snake Summons had attached itself properly to his new body.

But there was still one thing left to do.

Glancing towards his servant, Orochimaru voiced the all-important question. "What news of Uzumaki Naruto? The facilities are prepared for experimentation, but have samples C-3 and F-27 remained stable? We will need them to limit his regeneration enough to make headway in the surgeries."

Kabuto glanced down, avoiding Orochimaru's gaze. "I'm… afraid that won't be possible, Orochimaru-sama. He escaped from the Anbu sent to capture him. They claimed that he fell into a pool of water before disappearing from their view. Danzō was… most displeased. However, he has compensated for losing Uzumaki with a Kekkei Genkai-gifted prize."

Orochimaru did not respond verbally. But when the air about the Sannin grew thick with malevolence and repressed rage, Kabuto was quick to leave. He knew his lord's moods well enough that he had no desire to stay by the man, if the Sannin could be called such. But Orochimaru called out to him before he could leave.

"Send in two servants. I will have need of their assistance." Kabuto hastily nodded as he backed out of the room.

The moment Kabuto left, Orochimaru calmed. To succumb to such rage here would be a waste of his time and energy. The sooner the hormones were flushed from this body, the better—their grip on his emotions was interfering. Humanity was such a pathetic state, so fragile, so controlled by their bodies and emotions. That had been amongst the first things he had discarded on his quest for power.

A Kekkei Genkai was valuable, yes, but it was not compensation for the loss of the jinchuuriki! Of _his_ jinchuuriki, Danzō's claims aside. He had claimed it, and it was his. Orochimaru would accept nothing less. So many plans, layered atop one another—and that child the keystone that would support them or let them fall to the earth.

The servants entered soon enough—simple villagers, and nothing more. They were, however, sufficient for his purposes. "Kukuku… I appreciate your coming. There is something I need you to do for me."

Orochimaru sneered as the commoners cowered before him. The fear of ordinary men was not worth savoring. So drab, so weak, so… pathetic. "Wh-what do you desire, m-my lord?"

"I need you to die."

It was amusing, how long it took them to comprehend what he had said. Confusion crossed their face, and he could see the dawning realization and horror enter their eyes—but by the time they turned to run, it was too late. He reached to the stand beside his bed, grabbing the scalpels Kabuto had left behind. They were ungainly, not meant for throwing, but that was alright—they were sharp enough to pierce the jugular. His skill more than made up for their flaws.

Orochimaru sighed as they bled out onto the floor. They weren't even able to fight back. How boring. Ordinary people truly were little more than mild entertainment. But that was of no real import—he set the thoughts aside as the focused his will on matters more worthy of his time.

He gathered his chakra around his body, preparing to fling it into the black abyss. "_Kuchiyose: Edo Tensei!_" The power of the jutsu pulled his chakra into the great darkness of death, and Orochimaru smiled.

What power! Every time he delved into the void that was all that crossed his mind. Things fled from his chakra—dark things, foul and hungry. They had tried to hunt him, when first he used the Edo Tensei. The thrill of crushing those formless and deathly beings had been more than he had ever imagined.

But he was not here to play games with the never-born. No, he was here for a purpose, but without preparations it took time to find things in this darkness. It would take—no, it would take no time at all, for he had already found them. Together, as expected. They had better contain the information he desired—he had no desire to waste his time searching through the minds of the countless dead.

He grasped at them, and pulled. They resisted, of course—the dead were loath to return to life, even those that missed it. But even the dead cannot eternal lie—willpower was what it took to pull them into the corpses he had made, and when it came to will none could compare to the great Orochimaru.

His eyelids snapped apart just in time to see the bodies before him get enveloped by coffins, rising to stand on end. There was silence for a long and tense moment—he almost began to entertain the ridiculous notion that he had failed, before he saw movement.

With a tremendous grating crash the doors of the caskets fell to the floor, revealing two people he had seen often since he had killed them.

"Again, Orochimaru? I hadn't thought that you would call us back after the last time. You drained us dry—we have no secret techniques left to teach you."

"Of that, Tsunade-hime, I have no doubt. Perhaps I simply wanted to reminisce?" Orochimaru laughed—a real laugh flavored with humor rather than malice. It was a disturbing sound.

"We don't believe you," said Jiraiya, scoffing as he looked over the snake before him. "A new body? Again?" A smirk crossed Jiraiya's face, although it did not touch his eyes. "Your 'immortality' seems to be quite costly. Have you considered dying? I would just _love_ to… talk… with you at great length about what you've been up to since we died."

Orochimaru shook his head. "I am not here to banter with you, Jiraiya-kun. No, you are here for something much more important. Something has gone missing, and I intend to find it again" He pulled forth a pair of red paper tags, each marked with an intricate seal. "I believe you know what I'm talking about—it is your godchild, after all." Jiraiya and Tsunade stared at him in horror, but were unable to move as he set the tags upon their bodies. Color flowed into the two and for a brief time they appeared as though they were once more alive; but unlike in life, they were now forced into obedience to his will.

Tears dripped from their eyes as they were compelled to speak, as they revealed to Orochimaru how to find their godchild. The knowledge of the dead was so much greater than what they knew in life, and their attempts to follow Naruto from beyond the veil now, in cruelest irony, worked against them.

Orochimaru stared at them without blinking throughout their explanation, slowly spinning Sharingan eyes displaying an inhuman malevolence to the world.

* * *

><p><strong>Author' Note:<strong>

Thanks for reading!

_**Lacus ad Orbii Alii**_: "Pool to the Otherworld". Orbis alia (the words change slightly due to them being in a different case) is the Latin name given to the Celtic concept of the 'Otherworld', originating from Marcus Annaeus Lucanus's (better known as 'Lucan') writings on druids. The Otherworld is another world that the Celts believed could be accessed across the sea, or could be found underground , or even reached through pools of water. Many of the smaller islands in the British Isles were considered to be a part of or were connected to the Otherworld. It existed alongside of, but apart from, the normal world. It has alternatively been called Tir na nOg (the 'o' is capitalized), Mag Mell, or Avalon; however, these have also been said to be places _within_ the Otherworld, rather than the name of the Otherworld; mythology being what it is, the tales can differ wildly from place to place. Because I could not find a word for the overall concept of the Overworld in those Gaelic languages I could actually find dictionaries for, I decided to go with the Latin name for it.

_**Sumi Henge no Jutsu**_: "Ink Transformation Technique". A technique I created for this story. It is superior to an ordinary Henge in that the ink used in the jutsu covers the body, giving the image more realism. The ink changes color upon the completion of the technique, becoming indistinguishable from reality. Due to this, there is no actual illusion used; techniques to dispel a Henge or genjutsu have no effect on the Sumi Henge.

_**Henge no Jutsu**_: "Transformation Technique". Showed up in the first chapter of this story. As in many other stories, it creates an illusion (albeit not a particularly powerful one) around the user, making them appear to be someone else. Naruto's use of the Henge results in him actually physically changing due to the influence of the demon fox; fox-spirits in Japanese myth (and many other cultures as well) are often particularly skilled at disguising themselves as others. This technique is slightly changed from the one used in canon Naruto; there is nothing in the actual manga to suggest that the transformation is only an illusion, despite how it is used in fanfiction.

_**Fushi Tensei**_: "Living Corpse Reanimation", or "Immortality Jutsu". The technique created by Orochimaru to allow him to take over another's body, consuming their mind and soul and replacing it with his own. Orochimaru gains the memories of the person whose body he enters with this technique.

_**Kuchiyose: Edo Tensei**_: "Summoning: Impure World Resurrection", or "Summoning Jutsu: Reanimation", depending on the translator. This technique (created by Orochimaru in this story, not the Nidaime Hokage) allows the user to pull forth the soul of a dead person from beyond the grave. The technique, empowered by deathly energies, requires the death of another to use. It reshapes the body and chakra to match that of the dead person, allowing them to be as efficient as they were in life. A special seal is required to achieve control over the summoned; however, the seal is also necessary for the dead to actually use their body beyond simple speech.

As you can see, I've made a few minor alterations to the techniques for this story, but nothing too major.

Zazie, in this story, is a type of dream demon—I was inspired by both the Nightmare Circus and her twin sister's artifact in the manga. The type of spirit will not come directly from any particular myth, but will be inspired by baku, nightmare/nightmara, and alps, plus some of my own imagination.

Hm… can anyone guess what I'm using to decide the names of chapters?


	5. Outside

**Disclaimer:**

I own neither Naruto nor Negima! Magister Negi Magi/Mahou Sensei Negima (take your pick of the name). These are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and Ken Akamatsu, respectively. Likewise, I do not possess any characters from other stories or other mediums of storytelling that may or may not be referenced in this fictional piece.

The names of the chapters are named after songs or albums, which I haven't necessarily listened to. I picked them because of their names.

-In The Spider's Web is named for _In the Spider's Web _by The Death Notes (former chapter title was named after _Spider's Web_ by Katie Melua)

-And Nothing But The Truth is the name of an album by Former

-Curioser and Curioser is from Santamonica's album of the same name.

-Almost Human shares the name of a song and album by Voltaire (the musician, not the historical figure)

-And this chapter is from the song by Staind

Hope you enjoy it!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Five:<strong>

**Outside**

"Alright! Time for the naked spelling bee!

Naruto nodded absentmindedly as he tried to remember where Negi had said the restaurants were. After class was over he would like to—

Naruto's line of thought, whatever it might have been, was thrown off course as the statement sank in. "Wh-what," Naruto choked out, "in the Sage's name is that?"

"Every time you misspell a word, you have to take off some of your clothes! C'mon, it's fun!" said the ridiculously perky girl in the seventeenth seat—the one with the orange hair and the short braided pigtails.

Naruto didn't know a great deal about teaching, but he didn't think having his students strip would bode well for him. He scrambled to try to come up with something else to distract the class with. "How about we…" What exactly did one do in class? He couldn't exactly have them practice sparring, or throw kunai, or anything else that Iruka-sensei had made the class do when they had been too active.

Did students in this world play tag? Was that something they did in class? Might as well try it, he supposed. "Uh…"

"Baka Rangers can't play this time. It always ends too soon when they are in it! Neither can Chao or Hakase, 'cause they are just too smart—oh, and Bookstore can't either! The first word is…" It was no use. Naruto had spent too long thinking, and they had already begun. Apparently, no one playing knew how to spell antidisestablishmentarianism, and the clothes were soon flying into the air.

"Wait! Stop, you can't—" Naruto only caught a brief glance of more bras than he had ever seen in his life before snapping his eyes towards the ground. They paid no attention to him. Where was he supposed to look?

That blonde lady—Shizuna what's-her-name—that had guided him to the classroom had come back right after the test finished. Apparently, the Headmaster wanted to talk with Negi about the field trip that was coming up. Naruto didn't see why the old guy needed to pull Negi out during class. It just seemed like it was unnecessary trouble.

And trouble it was, as some type of cloth landed on his head. Naruto didn't dare to look up, instead look at his feet as intensely as possible while he tried to figure out how he would get out of this situation unharmed.

His dilemma was solved soon enough, by a sharp tug upon his collar that pulled him off his feet. Naruto flailed as he was pulled out into the hall, barely restraining the urge to reach back and strike at the body behind him. He was released as soon as he was past the door, allowing the girl who dragged him from the room to slide it shut.

The barrier hardly muffled the noise from within, but it was apparently enough for the girl. "I swear they get worse every semester! For all that perv flaunts her status, Class Rep doesn't help much when the games start. Stupid Ayaka…"

Naruto leaned back against the hallway wall from his position on the floor to get a better look at her. The girl was waving her hands around in agitation and was pacing as she ranted, but her features were clear enough. Long and fiery hair was bound up into two tails that waved behind her, and every step set off the small bells that were tied into it.

She spun to look at him, and Naruto was struck by how unusual her eyes were—green and blue, each a different color. Of course, seeing as how she was glaring at him, he didn't have much time to wonder at how odd that was.

"What are you doing here? Negi is a fine enough sensei on his own, he doesn't need help from another kid," she said, her voice quiet but vehement.

Naruto privately agreed—it had taken him all of two minutes to successfully reduce the class to chaos. However, he didn't mention that aloud. Admissions of failure were best kept private. He opened his mouth to answer, but paused before speaking. Who was she? Only one student in the class knew about Negi's magic, and if this girl wasn't that Asuna girl then he would be in big trouble.

He tried to remember what Negi said that Asuna had looked like, but came up blank. Naruto cursed silently, before dredging one of Iruka-sensei's lectures up from his mind. This was one of those situations half-truths were supposed to be useful for… probably. He had slept through most of that class.

"Negi has been spending too much of his time on his duties as a teacher, and has been negele—ne—not doing his own studies as much as he should." Maybe he shouldn't have tried to use such big words… "I'm here to help take the load off his shoulders."

That should work. Sure, he said a word wrong, but that wasn't so unusual. He thought he gave a rather good reason, too, so there shouldn't be any—

"It's about his magic, isn't it?"

Damn.

* * *

><p>And that is how Naruto found himself sitting outside a restaurant, eating what the girl—Asuna—called a 'crêpe'. It seemed that there was a fair deal more foods here than he had ever heard of before. It was a thin bread with some sort of fruity sauce inside it, topped with a white cream; it had an odd flavor, but Naruto was surprised to find he liked it.<p>

"So you're working here to help Negi with his studies?"

Naruto swallowed as he reached back, rubbing the back of his head at Asuna's question. "Well, to free up his time so he can study. I don't really know much about this magic stuff."

The girl seated across from him frowned. "You 'don't really know much?' How little is that?"

Naruto glanced from side to side, double-checking to make sure nobody was watching them. Most of the other chairs were full, and people were too busy speaking to one another to pay attention to the two. It made him uncomfortable to have so many people so close, and it felt like they were crowding him even though no one was closer than two feet away.

He closed his eyes, hoping that Asuna would take it as him trying to focus on the question rather than an attempt to ignore all the _people_ that were everywhere around him. "I've only seen it used one or two times. I'm… new to these parts." Should he elaborate? It would be best to keep some secrets to himself, but she was Negi's friend and would probably find out from him. How much did friends tell one another, anyways? "I'm actually from a different world." Better safe than sorry. Although, when he said it out loud like that, it sounded like—

"Bullshit!" Asuna said, her voice just shy of outright shouting. Naruto tossed a glance to each side, worried that the crowd's attention would turn on them, but nobody reacted to the girl's noise at all. "There's… that… you can't honestly expect me to believe that! That sounds more like something pulled from a manga than real life!"

"Your teacher is a wizard," Naruto pointed out as helpfully as he could. The glare Asuna sent his shut him up before he could say more.

"I know that," she said, surprising Naruto with how quiet she was after being so loud. "Don't think I don't. I fought a robot just the other day, and Negi is always doing… _something_, that always points it out. And I—"

She stopped, not finishing her sentence. A blush crossed her face, and her hand went up to cover her mouth. Naruto cocked his head to the side, not understanding why she would do that. Did it have something to do with whatever a 'robot' was?

He leaned across the table to look more closely at her, although he was careful not to touch her. "Are you alright? You look sort of flushed…" Naruto peered into her unusual eyes, looking for a glazed look that might mean she was sick. He was actually sort of glad for this distraction; it was harder to pay attention to how many people there were when she kept pulling his focus back to her.

Asuna pushed him hard enough to knock him back into the chair as she blushed harder. "What is with you kids these days? So… touchy!"

Naruto rubbed at his chest where she pushed him, wisely not pointing out that Asuna was the one who touched him. Asuna, seeing that he wasn't going to talk more, continued. "I suppose I'm a bit magical myself, now. I know that—I get that. But… another world? That's just… too much." Her voice fell as she finished. Asuna shook her head, and stared at the half-eaten crêpe on her plate so as not to look at the boy across from her.

If she had looked at him, she wouldn't have met his eyes, for he too was staring at his plate (now devoid of crêpe). Hearing it like that... he couldn't help but feel again that shock himself. '_What do I do now? I… I have no home. I don't know this place… and I am…'_ Naruto clutched at his stomach with one hand, acutely aware of the seal that would mark him for the rest of his life.

What would he do with his life? Back in Konoha, a child's future would already be apparent by this age; training to be a shinobi, learning a craft from one's parents… it was so clear what would happen. In Tanzaku, he had always struggled just to survive; even then, there were vague, childish goals of becoming a ninja, joining another village or becoming a mercenary.

But here? What did he have that anyone in this world would need? He had only been here for a short time, but he hadn't seen any weapons at all, or any other signs of fighting. Naruto didn't know what he could do aside from that that anyone would want.

"So… how did someone like you, uh, get here?" Asuna asked, pulling Naruto from his thoughts. He was thankful for that. She wasn't looking directly at him, instead staring downwards while she wrapped a length of hair about her finger. Naruto guessed that she didn't really believe him.

He couldn't blame her for that. He wasn't certain he believed him either. "I went to close to a portal and got sucked in," Naruto said, intentionally being as vague as possible. She didn't need to know any more about it—it was bad enough that others knew, and he wasn't about to let something so personal spread about. Especially something that nobody else had any business knowing about. It wasn't like it was important to anyone, or would make a difference in the situation. That world was behind him.

The skeptical look on her face said that she wasn't going to accept something so vague for an answer. It had been a long time since Naruto had been in real conversations. How little could he explain and have it come out sounding satisfactory? What sorts of lies should he tell someone he would be meeting and talking with in the future? The most he had done in… well, years, was greetings to people that hardly knew him, like that old shopkeeper from Tanzaku, and there were no questions about himself in those situations.

"Since there's no way for me to get back," he said, rubbing at the back of his head, "could you tell me a bit more about your classmates? There wasn't a lot to see on the character sheet—I mean, class roster." At least, he hadn't seen a lot of writing on it, other than a sentence or so under someone's name.

Asuna wasn't the gossip-hound that Haruna and Asakura were—no one was, something for which the world should be thankful. But she was a part of class 3-A, and that was enough for her to begin talking. The only people in that class that didn't have a role in the gossip chain were the ones were the ones that didn't talk. That is to say, no one; even Zazie would talk to the Class Rep (although Asuna still couldn't figure out how that shotacon could actually hold a conversation with someone who never said anything).

Speaking of Ayaka… she had best warn him about her. Naruto didn't look like he was much older than Negi was, if that, and that put him in the danger zone. He would need to watch out for whatever the twins and Misora would do next, too; Asuna would bet her collection of Takahata-sensei photos that the only reason Naruto hadn't been pranked yet was because they hadn't had the opportunity to set one up.

He smiled when she brought up those three and their pranks, which surprised Asuna. Sure, he had smiled a few times before in the conversation, but this one looked… different, somehow, almost brighter. Foxy, maybe. That was odd—but honestly, in her class there were weirder things than boys who had a dozen different grins, so it probably wasn't very important.

Naruto didn't ask many questions, seemingly content to let her ramble on about the others in the class. Asuna told him about the different groups in class, and how he could expect to find all the cheerleaders together most of the time, and about how some of the girls were starting to form a band. She told him about the best places in town to eat (that is to say, Chao Bao Zi), and how everyone who worked there was in their class. When Naruto did ask questions, they were almost entirely about Takahata-sensei and Negi. Even then, they were clumsy and uncomfortable, almost as if he wasn't used to asking questions. Which was, of course, ridiculous.

Asuna might not have been the brightest crayon in the lightbulb, and was the star of the Baka Rangers, but she wasn't a total idiot. She could tell that Naruto was trying to hide something—no one had ever said she was unobservant, after all. She hadn't noticed immediately, but after complaining about how Takahata-sensei had been gone recently, Asuna had realized that she hadn't actually managed to make him explain more about being from a 'different world' at all. She'd pull the answers out of him when there were fewer people around, but the seats around them were starting to fill up quickly.

That wasn't the only thing about him that she had noticed. Time passed as they talked and more people started to get out of class. Whenever someone would walk near them, Naruto would start to lean away, and when someone actually brushed against him he had flinched back from them. As more people arrived, he asked even fewer questions, and was less responsive to her. He had problems using the plastic fork and knife that came with the crêpe, and he kept staring at… well, everything, like it was completely new.

Asuna hated to admit it, but it was looking more and more likely that Naruto was actually from a different world… something about the idea rang true to her, particularly when she could see how awkward Naruto was here. Although there was something else about the way he acted that puzzled her—something that was different, but that Asuna didn't think was due to being from another culture.

She continued to talk to—or at, considering how little he was responding—Naruto for more than an hour after that. Eventually, she had to leave—Art Club was coming up, and Takahata-sensei might be there today.

Asuna got out of her chair and stretched. "Sorry to run out on you, but I've got to go Takahata-sensei's Art Club. I've been skipping club activities too many times this month." Whoops. She hadn't meant to add that last part.

Fortunately, her new sensei did not seem to really care about her skimping out on the club—which she appreciated. It would be nice to have a teacher that wasn't always harping on about participating in school activities.

"Takamichi is in charge of a club?" Although that was not to say that he wasn't interested, it seemed. Ugh… hopefully he wouldn't ask if she was any good…

"Of course he is. All the teachers have to serve as an advisor for at least one club." Naruto's eyes widened and Asuna could actually hear him swallow in nervousness as she spoke. "Didn't the Headmaster tell you? He may be a dull old pervert, but he doesn't skip over anything when it involves school." Although he conveniently 'forgot' plenty of other things… Konoka's (many) objections to her (many) omiai came to mind.

"I… might have slept through that part."

Asuna stared at him in disbelief. "You _slept_ through your orientation? Y-you're a teacher! What are you, stupid? You'll get fired if you stuff like that!" Of course, she wasn't one to talk… she normally fell asleep as soon as the old geezer opened his mouth. But still, he was supposed to be their sensei!

A small grin was all that Asuna received in response, to which she could only shake her head. He didn't seem like a teacher at all. He'd need to shape up his act before he got in trouble. "Anyways, you'll need to attach yourself to a group soon. Negi is the one in charge of our after-school study group, which is only one of dozens without an advisor. We have more than a hundred and eighty clubs, after all."

Asuna still couldn't believe that Makie had applied to make the Baka Rangers an official club—honestly, it was stupid enough as is, and there were already never enough teachers to advise all the clubs. She hadn't been more embarrassed since the first week after Negi arrived.

And _that_ wasn't something she wanted to think about.

* * *

><p>Chao Lingshen glared at the short-haired girl across from her. "I said I'm <em>fine<em>, Ako. I'm coughing, not dying!"

Izumi Ako's gaze dropped to the floor, but even in her nervousness she continued to speak. "B-but you're sick! You need to at least visit the nurse for some cold medicine, and if you're coughing you shouldn't work today." She swallowed, about to continue, but another hard look from Chao made her keep quiet.

Chao knew that she only had to keep pushing and Ako would leave—she was a nice girl, but gave in to what other people asked of her too easily. But she would remember, and possibly come back later—Chao didn't remember any of the stories about her mentioning how stubborn Ako could be when she set her mind to something, but she was. Then again, the stories never explained the red eyes and blue hair, either. It would be best to try a different tactic.

Chao sighed and drooped her head and shoulders, letting a defeated tone enter her voice. "Alright, alright—I'll let Satsuki, Kū Fei, and Chachamaru run the restaurant today—but honestly, it's not something that I need to see the nurse over." She looked up at Ako and gave her a small grin—a real one, although it was at least half-smirk as she saw how easily Ako accepted this. "I'll be fine, really."

Ako smiled in relief and pulled her backpack off of her shoulders. "Thank you! If you, um, need anything, I've got all sorts of medicines with me," she said as she rummaged through the bag, pulling out bottles of pills to shove into Chao's arms. Really, why did Ako even think she needed this stuff? She was in the Chinese Medicine Club, after all. "I-I think you should take the dextromethorphan-based meds now, but if your cough is…"

Chao forced the smile to stay on her face as she droned out Ako's well-meant advice. She had made a small concession, and while that would help make Ako leave in the short term, it could convince her that she had a chance to drag out more. She'd have to be careful—but then again, she always had to be careful, even with something like this.

The perils of being a time traveler, she supposed.

A lull in the conversation (or rather, in Ako's monologue) offered Chao the chance to escape. However, another voice joined the conversation before she could speak.

"I brought the parts for the observation drone, but it doesn't seem like it will need the both of us to—" The sound trailed away as the girl entering the room saw who was sitting at the table. Satomi Hakase blinked rapidly and slid off her glasses to buff them on the edge of her white lab coat. When she put them on again, she seemed surprised that there were still two people in her room. "Izumi-san? Is that you?"

Ako nodded her head, which seemed to only further confuse Hakase. "But this isn't your room," she said, obviously not understanding why anyone else would be in here. Here in _her_ room, where all of her stuff was. Her stuff, not Ako's. If Chao had been the sort to laugh aloud, she would have at the perplexed expression on her friend's face.

But laughter wasn't a demonstration of emotion suitable for someone in service to science such as herself, save for the odd maniacal cackle or two, so she didn't. Controlled and intentional chuckles were far more appropriate. But she would have, and that's what really counts, isn't it?

The shyness that had abandoned Ako throughout the day returned. She ducked her head as an embarrassed blush crossed her face, and her reply was halting and stuttering. "W-w-well, I-I, um, just thought that Chao didn't look healthy, and I, uh," she paused and looked to Chao for support. Chao rolled her eyes in exasperation, although she was careful to conceal the motion as she made encouraging motions with her hands. Ako swallowed before speaking. "Sh-she looked unwell, so I got some of my medicines to take to her. I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to intrude!"

Hakase waved the apology aside—Chao thought she might not have actually understood that it was an apology. Hakase's understanding of what is polite and what is rude was different from any that Chao had ever met before. Chao's friend leaned over to look at her, hmming and hawing as she looked at her face. Hakase frowned, and spoke without turning around. "Thank you for coming. Chao appreciates it. Please leave the medicine here when you leave."

Ako looked too eager to leave to take offense at Hakase's curt manner, and Chao doubted that Hakase even understood she had been rude. She tended to judge how other people would react by how she would, which was decidedly _not_ the same reaction most others would have.

The door closed, leaving Chao and Hakase alone in their dorm. The room was evenly divided, and it was easy to see who lived where. One side of the room was Chao's; she kept the room devoid of anything beyond the technology of the modern era (well, beyond Mahora standards of technology, at least), and her smaller pet projects that she didn't mind people knowing about were carefully organized and sorted. Her part of the room was neat, ordered, and clean.

Her roommate's was… not. Hakase, and Hakase alone, understood where everything was in the junk heap that covered her half of the dorm; bits and pieces of machinery even lay upon her bed, leaving Hakase with only enough space to curl up when she went to sleep. Not that she slept in that bed very often; Chao had lost track of the number of times she had visited the Robotics Club before school only to find Hakase dozing on a table.

Hakase carefully removed a half-finished device from a chair to place upon a pile of similar half-finished and completed projects that covered her desk. Not that anyone could actually _see_ the desk anymore under all her stuff, but they still called in her desk.

"What was that one? I don't remember you working on it before." And she would have, if she had ever seen it. One of the modifications They had made to her improved her memory.

Chao shut the thought away before it could progress, sliding it into a partitioned section of her mind. It would not due to think such this, not now. There was still too much to do to surrender to emotions that shouldn't have existed in the first place. Hatred had no place in the world she was building.

Hakase didn't notice, of course—Chao didn't let her. "Evangeline asked me to modify Chachamaru's programming, particularly as relates to combat. Apparently she got in a fight the other day, and wasn't able to defeat someone who she should have been able handle easily. That's going to be a supplement to her processing core," she said with a jab of her finger towards the pile behind her.

"But those combat protocols were state of the art! Well, not by the future's standards, but nothing else in this time period could make anything that even approaches what she already has."

Hakase shrugged. "That's true, and we did the best we could considering what supplies we had. But we made her a long time ago, and making her combat-ready wasn't much of a priority, compared to the proper integration of magic and technology."

Chao nodded, now understanding what happened better than Hakase did. From what she remembered, this would have been the time when Negi fought Evangeline. So Chachamaru as-is couldn't beat Asuna? Chao wondered if her programming had already advanced to the point that she couldn't go all-out when fighting someone with whom she had an emotional connection—that should be happening sometime this year, according to her mother's stories. She knew the current Asuna didn't have the skills required to defeat Chachamaru with her original programming.

Regardless, Chachamaru was a year old, and she needed to be upgraded before she became obsolete. And she now had a fully operational lair, rather than the half-finished place of the last several years. "I can finish that one for you," Chao offered. "You're still trying to make an alternative chassis for Chachamaru, after all."

The mound atop Hakase's desk wobbled as Hakase stuck her hand into it without looking, pulling forth the lopsided and half-finished device. She passed it to Chao, trusting her friend to know what to do to complete it. Chao took a hold of it, and gently slid her fingers across its surface, trying to get a feel for the device before she did any work on it.

Hakase did excellent work for her century. It was small and easily capable of attaching to Chachamaru's processing core. Chao approved—it was far better to connect it and have the programming separate, rather than risk altering the core programming and personality (which relied in no small part upon magic).

Chao ran her thumb along the thin tracery of the countless microchips imbedded into the board, and felt a tingle run across her hand. Holographic tracery appeared within her eyes, and Hakase's work projected itself upon her retina. A near-endless stream of code flew bye, and Chao gave a smile of appreciation. It was well done—not as good as Chao could do of course—but well done. She'd have to improve it before she would put it into Chachamaru, though.

Chao closed her eyelids, blocking out the real world, in order focus on the coding. As such she was caught completely unawares when Hakase began to question her. "What's wrong with you?" she asked, blunt as could be.

Chao didn't open her eyes. She had hoped that talking about Hakase's project would distract her, but she should have known that her friend wouldn't let it drop. She always had focused so intently on a single goal that nothing in the way could distract her for more than a moment. "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean, Hakase. I'm as healthy as I could be, all things considered."

Hakase scowled. "Really." It didn't sound like a question at all.

Even so, Chao gave her one of her smile-smirks. "Yes. Martians don't lie, after all."

Hakase reached out to poke her in the forehead, making Chao open up her eyes to glare at her. "Your pupils have almost completely eclipsed your iris, and the veins in your sclera are painfully visible. You've used lipstick—I'm guessing to hide the fact that your lips have gone pale. "

"Actually, pale would describe you quite well—much more, and you'd be the very image of an albino. And your fingers are shaking." Chao looked down, and saw that Hakase was right. How odd—she hadn't noticed that. But then, her thoughts these last few days haven't been as composed as they ought to be. "Now tell me; _what's wrong?!_"

Chao reached back to grab one of her braids, twining it around her fingers as she thought. She never used to do this, but after she had come to Mahora she realized that most people had a nervous habit, so she made one for herself. It gave her time to think of a response, and the repetitive hair-fondling sometimes actually helped her concentrate.

How should she explain? Hakase wasn't the sort to panic, and she usually had control of her emotions, but Chao didn't know how she would react to this news. She certainly hadn't expected her to be so vehement in trying to discover the source of her infirmity. Perhaps a leading question would be best. A pensive expression grew on her face.

"Do you remember three years ago, when I first came to Mahora?" Chao looked over at Hakase, to be certain that she was listening. At her nod, Chao continued, still running her fingers across her braid. "I applied for the school immediately after I travelled through time. It might have been better to wait." She shook her head, and a small, amused chuckle escaped her lips. Chuckling was acceptable for mad scientists. "Time travel in and of itself isn't bad, but when you go backwards it gets messy. More than a couple days—if you can even get enough power for that—and even the small, minor changes you make begin to take their toll.

Hakase understood what Chao was talking about immediately, of course. Chao expected nothing less from her friend and fellow woman of science. "A paradox?" she whispered with a shudder, one that Chao mimicked. The very word made her feel cold—and for the past few days, she had been very cold indeed. "But that's impossible. You've been here for years, and you haven't—I mean, you're still here. The paradox would have… I mean, you still exist." Hakase sounded almost breathless, and her oh-so-quiet voice was touched by horror.

Chao buried her own fear deep in her mind before it could get its claws in her. Fear could be even worse than hatred, and more debilitating. "That's what the injections were for." Chao touched her hand to her heart, gently feeling the outline of the metallic port imbedded in her skin. "A paradox will start to pull me apart, to unmake every last particle of my body from existence. The injections held it at bay, but everything got worse recently, and I need to take twice as many now. I have to make more of them, but I haven't had the time to go back to our laboratory."

Hakase stared at the spot, remembering what she had seen before. "So those weren't for your heart at all. A physical substance that interacts with temporal energy to prevent a paradox? Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating." Her eyes glanced up at Chao's, and she remembered that she was talking about her friend's life rather than science. Although to Hakase they might have been the same thing. "You were so careful to avoid making big changes! And what about your plans for the festival? That never happened in your time. Wouldn't that cause an even bigger paradox? What happened to cause this one?"

Chao held up her hand, palm facing outwards, to quiet Hakase. It worked, as it tended to; for all that Hakase could (and would) talk at length about any topic she knew even the slightest about, she enjoyed listening as well. Maybe that was why Chao liked her so much. "I was going to increase the dosage of the injections—which did, in fact, help my heart—as soon as the festival was announced. That's when the biggest changes would occur. And once I went back to my own time, the paradox would cease to be a problem, as I re-integrated into the correct timeframe. As for the cause of the paradox… I don't know, but I'm trying to find out."

Of course, she had a very good idea of what started this paradox, although she wasn't one hundred percent certain. One could do a great deal to the truth before it became a lie.

Uzumaki Naruto. She recognized the name, if only vaguely (he had not had a particularly important role in the history of the only two worlds she paid much attention to), and she knew that he _should not be here_. He lived and died on his own world, probably without even discovering others existed. She hadn't studied him in any depth (didn't even know what he was famous for—he was mentioned on an essay about demonic influences upon the human form, nothing more), but she knew that something very, very wrong must have happened for him to be here.

She was getting more injections, which would help remove the symptoms of the paradox (and prevent her from being removed from existence, which she didn't think would be very enjoyable at all), but it did nothing to solve the root problem that it existed.

For the first time in three years, she didn't know what was going to happen, or what she was supposed to do.

She smiled at Hakase, and slid her burgeoning fear into another piece of her mind. There would be time to consider the Uzumaki problem later. For now, she had work to do. Chachamaru did need to be at her best, after all.

And if some part of her was protesting that she was just trying to avoid the problem, well… such thoughts didn't last long until they, too, were pushed away into that quiet corner of her mind.

* * *

><p>However, not everyone was trying to avoid thinking about one Uzumaki Naruto. Indeed, some people hardly stopped thinking about him.<p>

Hatake Kakashi was one such person.

The Memorial Stone remained in Konohagakure. There was no way that their rebellion would have been able to take it, and despite its sentimental value it wasn't worth the effort and risks it would take to steal it. The Konoha rebels were hardly about to let the honored dead be forgotten, however, and had found a large chunk of obsidian they had dutifully used to reproduce the stone. It wasn't the same though, and even the genin could tell. The solemnity and sorrow and duty that had sunk into every fragment of the original stone was lacking in their replication of it.

There were more names on it now, Kakashi noticed. It was only to be expected, of course; they had taken losses over the course of their fight against Danzō, and everyone knew that they wouldn't find their way onto the real Memorial Stone while he was the Hokage.

"It's ironic, you know," a woman said as she strode to stand beside the Copy Ninja. "Danzō still delivers speeches about the Will of Fire, but even the foreign shinobi can tell that his words are empty." Rain was falling, but lightly—the drops of water hit the ground like whispers, and gathered in glass-like beads where they fell. She didn't seem to notice the spring shower—of course, Kakashi didn't either. Minor weather such as this had ceased to bother them long ago.

Kakashi didn't turn to look at the woman beside him, his lone uncovered eye gazing at the stone. _Nara Shikaku. Shiranui Genma._ "Even so, the other villages are reluctant to aid us. We're lucky Ibiki was there for the negotiations, cause I doubt I would ever have been able to eke out what little he did out of those bastards." _Jiraiya. Momochi Zabuza_. "Thank you for suggesting that you bring him, Shizune. I would have preferred to go myself, but…"

Shizune gave a small smile. Kakashi admired how genuine her smiles were, even when things were at their worst. They were warm, like she was, and he drew great comfort from remembering them. He wondered if Danzō would kill her next.

"We both know why you had to be elsewhere. I knew you would head after Naruto before I ever told you that we found him." That was certainly true. He had to be there himself, to see the child once again with his own eye—to see sensei's child. It had been a long, long time since he had guarded the child while in Anbu.

"I was a suitable replacement for you anyways. After all, I was apprenticed to Tsu—to one of the Sannin, after all." Her voice fell towards the end, and from the corner of his eye Kakashi could see her turn to stare at the Memorial Stone. She couldn't say the name of her teacher, not anymore. She had been there when Orochimaru had finally hunted down Tsunade of the Sannin. Shizune never spoke about what happened, but Kakashi had been there to examine the battlefield.

Kakashi hadn't thought that, after so many years of serving in Anbu, he could find new material to star in his nightmares, but Orochimaru was nothing if not skilled at giving bad dreams.

Tiny beads of water on her hair coalesced, until a single larger droplet of water ran down Shizune's face. It looked as though a lone tear had escaped. Kakashi couldn't help but admire nature's sense of the appropriate.

"You did a good job. We have the support of Kumogakure now, even if it is only indirect." _Senju Tsunade. Yamashira Aoba. _Strange… so many names, so many friends, lost because of that man. Strange, that a single man could destroy so many lives. Strange, that this man could still claim to be on the path of righteousness.

"It wasn't enough. Without more help, we won't be able to remove Danzō—we don't have enough members, and we definitely don't have enough money to buy everything we need."

Kakashi sighed and closed his eye. He turned away from the Memorial Stone for the first time in two hours, putting the past to rest for the time being. It was alright, to set the dead to the side for a short time. He would be back here soon enough. Guilt wouldn't let him leave for long. "With relations with Konoha as tense as they are, Kumo can't support us with supplies or shinobi without provoking a full-out war."

"I know that—but there is still a lot that they could have done, but didn't," Shizune said, spinning on her heel to pace beside Kakashi. Kakashi thought that she had picked up the habit after Tsunade had died—that sort of nervous habit wasn't like the composed shinobi she had been under her teacher.

"You did get them to hand over information from their spy network," Kakashi helpfully provided, hiding his unease. Shizune had been pushing herself far too hard lately, and took failure too harshly—her own failures, at least. The talks had been more successful than Ibiki had anticipated, but had Kakashi known that Shizune was expecting as much as she did he would have sent another in her place. She had done well enough at the meeting, by all accounts, but she needed to accept that diplomacy was slow, at its best. "You also managed to strike up a deal with that Cloud-run trading company to get us off-the-records assistance and significant discounts, so long as we work through an intermediary. Ibiki even thinks we may be able to get a solid, official alliance with them within the year. All we need is time."

"But that's just it," Shizune yelled, her rampaging emotions displayed across her face as she spun to face him. "They know what Danzō is like—they know it won't be long until he forces his way across the border! Time is exactly what we _don't_ have!" A sprinkle of water flew from Shizune's hair as she shook her head, her body trembling in anger. "They can't give us half-hearted support and expect that to be enough to stop him."

"Kumogakure agreed to speak positively of us to the other villages—one of the smaller nations bordering Hi no Kuni will almost certainly be willing to provide us assistance, now that we've survived to this point." To say nothing of the ever-growing tensions between the Konoha and the nations surrounding it—at least, the nations not already under Danzō's thumb. Everyone knew that Danzō would make his move soon, which thanks to his alliance with Orochimaru meant that Suna and Oto would move as well.

"I know." A quiet sigh, but not one of defeat. Kakashi was glad; defeat didn't fit Shizune. "I just don't know if that will be enough."

Kakashi understood the feeling, and sympathized. Danzō, regardless of the damage to his moral compass, was undeniably a strong leader. True, he was leading in a direction Konohagakure was not meant to go, but Konoha had gained power under his rule. Root was better known, and Danzō could legitimately pull new "recruits" from wherever he wanted without much concern for the political fallout.

Considering Danzō's personality, Kakashi was rather surprised that _all_ of the Konoha shinobi weren't subject to Root's indoctrination, but even Danzō could only go so far before the common people wouldn't be able to take anymore. The man strode a fine line between keeping the support of the masses, and making them rise against him.

Whenever they came close to bringing the people to join their rebellion, Danzō had cut back on his more controversial activities until the anger settled down. Active Root recruitment dropped, Anbu patrols became less harsh on minor wrongdoings, and more concessions were made to improve public welfare—only for Danzō to slowly reinstate old laws or alter the newer ones so that Konoha ended up wrapped ever tighter around his finger.

And by every god and spirit he could name, Kakashi hated it.

But if things went as planned, they might finally be able to take a more proactive stance against Danzō. "If that was all we had to help us, no, it wouldn't be enough." Kakashi felt his mouth start to twitch into a grin as Shizune stared at him in shock. Her expressions were just so adorable. "But that isn't all we have. Sai was finally given the order to return."

Shizune's face went through no overt change, but Kakashi could still see the telltale signs of distress marring her features. "Sai had to go back to Konohagakure? But—he'll never survive it. He's changed too much. We both know how Danzō is, surely he would be able to see how different Sai has become."

Kakashi closed his eyes, and tried not to think about what was almost certain to befall the socially-inept youth that had, somehow, opened his eyes to see the world without Danzō coloring his every sight. "I know. I told him, too, when he originally approached me with this plan. But he insisted." He gave a half-hearted chuckle as he remembered the conversation. "I don't think I've ever heard him yell before then, but he was determined to do something important for the rebellion before Danzō caught him."

And Danzō would, eventually, catch him if Sai continued to play the double-agent. Danzō was fallible, Kakashi knew, but he was also a damned skilled ninja and politician. He doubted that Sai could fool him for long, and Sai had agreed—but he didn't think he would do as much good staying with the rebellion as he would by taking advantage of his position.

Damn him.

"What went wrong in the mission?"

The question leapt from nowhere, but Kakashi was glad for it all the same. He glanced towards the Memorial Stone and was surprised to find the shadows a fair bit longer than they had been earlier. He must have spent more time reminiscing than he thought.

But that was alright. It usually happened, when he was here with the dead.

"A stupid mistake is what happened," Kakashi said, shaking his head at his own foolishness. It had been such an amateur mistake, too. Thank the gods Gai was working undercover in Konoha, and wasn't here to hear about it. He'd never shut up if he was here. "We were entering the city under a simple Henge, and intended to cover up with a physical disguise once we entered the city."

"Of course. The wigs, powders, contacts—keeping the disguise on while you were travelling is risky," Shizune said. She didn't move as water trickled down her face—the rain had stopped, apparently while he had been lost in memories, but her hair was still wet. Kakashi liked the way it glimmered when the light hit it. "But how was that—oh, Kami. Naruto saw you, didn't he?"

"Right in one," Kakashi spat. Shizune flinched back from him. He couldn't blame her—he had lost Sensei's child once again, the charge that both the Sandaime and Yondaime had trusted him to protect—and, with Jiraiya's death, his godson. All because he had forgotten just how special Naruto was. How could she not be disgusted?

It didn't occur to him that she was shrinking away from the self-loathing in his voice, but Kakashi rarely considered such things.

"S-still, he couldn't have recognized you! Even if he ignored the genjutsu, he's never actually seen your face."

He shook his head. "I don't think Naruto gave me anything more than a cursory glance—if the boy was actually Naruto. Heh…you know, I don't think he's forgotten as much as we were afraid he would. He could certainly recognize the clan markings of the genin we brought, and his Henge didn't falter at all during the entire conversation."

Kakashi felt a small burst of pride at that. It wasn't much—hell, it was something he should have expected and taken measures against—but he hadn't realized that the boy had been Naruto until they reached the decidedly empty ramshackle hut they had been directed to. He ignored the twinge he felt, for having been so close to Naruto and not realizing it. For not talking to the child he had watched over, so long ago.

Shizune nodded, but looked troubled. "So he… he ran? Before you could say anything?"

"Not quite." How odd. His voice was trembling. Why was that? "Naruto actually gave us directions to his house before slipping away. Didn't even realize it was him until we got there—he hadn't been able to take everything from the house, and there was an old class picture from the Academy in there. He based his disguise off an old dropout." Kakashi chuckled at the irony of the thought, but it trailed away as he continued.

"He must have left the city immediately. Danzō must have expected Naruto to flee Tanzaku, because Root wasn't far behind."

Shizune said a word that Kakashi sincerely hoped she didn't understand. "Danzō has Naruto?! Damn it Kakashi, that is not something you wait to tell me about! Why the hell didn't you follow them?" Every sentence was punctuated by a (rather threatening) step forwards, forcing Kakashi to back away.

'_Has she been taking lessons from Anko?'_ Kakashi wondered as Shizune took a pause to breathe. "Calm down, Shizune! Danzō doesn't have him."

Shizune raised an eyebrow at him and folded her arms. "I'm listening."

Oh dear. That wasn't a pleasant-looking stance at all. "I tried to follow, but I couldn't give chase very well while I was hiding my chakra signature, but I finally managed to find them. I saw them on their return trip to Tanzaku, but they didn't have Naruto with them."

Had he dared to release his own chakra, he could have found their chakra signature and caught up easily, but he couldn't afford Danzō finding him. Not when finding him meant finding Naruto, too. As it was, he had barely managed to avoid being caught by them on their way back to the city.

Shizune motioned for him to continue. Kakashi was glad to see that she wasn't glaring at him anymore. That was always a good sign—well, it was for Shizune, at least. "I followed their trail until it just… disappeared. It looked like there was a small fight, but Naruto just disappeared after falling into a pool of water. No trace at all after that—no footprints, no scent, I couldn't even feel his chakra."

"How did he ju—"

"No idea," Kakashi said, cutting her off. "But I'm fairly certain no one has him right now."

Shizune spared him another glare for interrupting her, continuing only after seeing him look properly contrite. "How are the genin? With Danzō coming, it was dangerous to take them."

"Do you honestly believe I would pull our genin out from Konoha just for this?" Kakashi asked, giving Shizune a hurt look. "I only brought Hinata and Shikamaru. The rest had been sent there on a mission to deal with the gangs."

And hadn't that been a shock. Hinata had nearly shrieked when her Byakugan saw through the others' genjutsu and found her old friends. Thank goodness she spent so much time with Shizune—Hinata had much better control of her emotions now, certainly better than when her father had faked her death to get her out of Konohagakure.

With the prodigal Hanabi on the rise, the less talented Hinata would have been forced to become a member of the Branch family—Hiashi had, of course, chosen the worst way to handle it. Kakashi still didn't understand how the decision to give his daughter to a newborn rebellion was a good idea, but he did know that Hinata hadn't handled it well, and that his other daughter ended up being given over to Danzō. Kakashi was actually glad he didn't know what had happened to Hanabi after that—it meant he would never have to tell it to Hinata.

"Are the gangs in Tanzaku really that big a problem? With the city being so important to trade, I thought it would be better policed," asked Shizune.

Kakashi nodded. "Yes, they've always been a problem—most travelers avoid the seedier parts of town, so I'm not surprised you don't know much about it. Konoha actually sent four teams of genin, each led by chūnin—we were lucky to have run into the ones that were sympathetic to our cause." Kakashi laughed. "I never would have thought Iruka, of all people, would have been such a cornerstone of the rebellion, but almost half our members are here because of him."

Shizune lightly punched him in the arm. "I told you Iruka would be important. You really should listen to me more often—if you had, maybe Anko wouldn't have gotten the credit for recruiting him."

He was glad that she was acting more like Shizune—her earlier emotional outburst had been worrying. Not that he could blame her; often, the entire encampment felt like it was only one bad day away from snapping. Even so, seeing Shizune begin to lose it had been… unpleasant.

"It turned out alright in the end, didn't it?" Kakashi smirked, although no one could tell through the cloth mask covering his mouth. "Anko certainly thinks so, if the number of times she 'just happens' to run into him on missions means anything."

Shizune punched him in the arm. Again—but harder, this time. "Don't go spreading gossip, Kakashi! Honestly, you jōnin gossip worse than children."

He chuckled and rubbed his arm. It was starting to get sore. "Shizune, you wound me! I, gossip? You must have the wrong shinobi."

Shizune snorted and looked away. "I'll believe that when I see it." She was quiet for a moment before she continued, her voice more somber than the joking tone that had lightened the conversation earlier. "The genin being sent to Tanzaku at that time couldn't have been a coincidence. Not if Naruto was chased by Root so soon after leaving.

Kakashi conceded the point—not that he hadn't thought the same thing himself, but it was always good to make people who weren't as stunningly, amazingly brilliant as he come to their own conclusions. Although he did wonder why she insisted on calling them genin—no few of the shinobi there had been chūnin. Hinata and Shikamaru were certainly of that level, even if they had no official shinobi rank.

"Shikamaru and I discussed it on the way back. They must have been the hounds sent to flush the fox out of hiding, thinking they were hunting rabbits." Kakashi shook his head as he remembered the conversation. He should have explained more to the two about Naruto's powers beyond simply being a jinchuuriki—they might have been able to get to Naruto before Danzō if they had.

"Our oh-so-benevolent Danzō doesn't seem to have forgotten Naruto's uncanny ability to ignore illusions. It must have been the reason why he sent so many shinobi from the more famous clans—Naruto might not have noticed them if they weren't recognizable." And his own attempt to use the Konoha shinobi to find Naruto just helped nudge the boy along faster.

His tone was light, almost jesting—but beneath his words, Kakashi had to hide a spasm of anger. Danzō had, once again, outdone him. Had, once again, pushed Naruto to someplace Kakashi couldn't reach. And Kakashi had played an unwitting role in it. That Danzō wasn't aware that he had helped his plan along hardly mattered—Kakashi knew, and that was enough.

He had, yet again, failed the Yondaime. The onus of his failure pressed upon him, a dark and heavy stone added to a mountain of similar wrongs.

Kakashi wondered how he would survive breaking the news to Anko.

The medic noticed his turmoil—Shizune always did. "Have you and Ibiki come to a conclusion about the Chūnin Exams yet? I know Anko didn't really have an opinion about it, so it comes down to the two of you."

She hadn't confronted him about his failure. Kakashi was thankful—he needed to focus now, not dwell on his past mistakes. Right now, the future needed him. "Not in the least. Ibiki opposes the idea, but if we submit ourselves as a village to partake in the Chūnin Exams, it will serve as a powerful symbol and statement of our opposition against Danzō."

Shizune nodded—she had, after all, come up with the idea. Kakashi sometimes wondered why she didn't take his place as one of the leaders of the rebellion. "And since the next exam will take place at Kumo, we would have the protection of the village and make the village give us more solid support."

That had been Ibiki's main issue with the idea. If the rebellion tried to force Kumo's hand, Ibiki said, they might just hand the rebels over to Konoha to avert war. Kakashi didn't think that was likely.

"Kumogakure won't be able to hide after a move like that—they, and by extent their allies, will need to work with us to remove Danzō. If we can work more of our own genin in Konoha to join the next exams, we can have them openly change allegiance to the Konoha Rebellion."

It sounded painless, but both Kakashi and Shizune knew it wouldn't be. Even so, Shizune supported the idea; something that Kakashi admired about her. Even though she knew it would be painful, she still knew how to do what was necessary—he supposed, being a medic, she would know that pain was necessary to heal. Shizune looked towards the Memorial Stone—or, more accurately, she looked at the empty spaces that would soon begin to fill. "We would lose some of them in the process, and thus some of our own spies in Konoha. But they would symbolize Konohagakure itself rising up against Danzō. That could be the final move we need to get enough support to actually win this war.

Kakashi voiced his agreement, but he didn't think that was all it would take. Not with Danzō and Orochimaru as their enemies. They needed more.

They needed Naruto. Even with minimal training, a jinchuuriki was a formidable force on the battlefield—and Kakashi would make sure that his godson had much more than minimal training. He knew the Rasengan, after all, and many more techniques he had seen the Yondaime use.

But until they got the information they needed to go after his godson, the rebellion needed to work on other things to improve themselves, to garner status, to get new recruits.

Or to save them. The upcoming rescue operation would do nicely.

* * *

><p>"What do you think of him?"<p>

Tatsumiya Mana did not answer. Her companion couldn't interfere this time, not while she still had the target in sight. She wriggled her torso, settling deeper into the small furrow in which she lay. Her hair fanned out behind her, covering the dark skin of her neck.

She stared down the scope of her rifle at her new blond "sensei", the crosshairs perfectly aligned against Uzumaki's temple as he walked down the street. Mana's brow furrowed at the boy's movements. He did not move like someone trained to fight—there was a coiled tension, a trained readiness in motion that Uzumaki lacked—but…

Mana did not like the idea that she might have to fight the boy. Not up close, at least. There was something about Uzumaki that rubbed her the wrong way, something that made something deep within her shiver at having to fight him.

"What's this? Mana, without a witty quip? I'm shocked. Really though, what do you think of our new sensei?"

It was nonsensical, of course. Mana had endured the wars that had stricken the world while still a child, had waged battles against terrorists and dictators across continents before she had even gone to school. Even now, she made her living through combat—often against beings that didn't belong in this planet at all. She had even outlived her Magister.

Her eyes fell from the scope at the thought, and her hand rose of its own accord to brush against the locket at her neck.

No. There was no time for that while on a mission. She raised her gaze once more to peer down the rifle at her target. Her honor as a mercenary was at stake—even for something as simple as stalking one boy, she couldn't afford to get compla—

"Damn him! Damn him to the ninth fucking hell!" Mana cursed, pushing herself to her feet and violently brushing dirt from her clothing.

Nagase Kaede raised an eyebrow at her friend (although that word implied a certain level of closeness and familiarity both Kaede and Mana steadfastly disavowed). "My my, such mild language! I didn't think you knew how to swear without dipping into that cesspit you call a language," she teased, her lids low over her eyes.

Mana made use of her knowledge of the Mazoku tongue (infinitely superior for insults than anything a mortal could pronounce) to tell Kaede exactly what she thought of her face, her mother, her future children, her intelligence, and the cleanliness and attractiveness of a wide variety of body parts.

"Let's just assume that was a compliment, and move past that, shall we? What happened?" Kaede asked as she leaned against a tree. The hill upon which they stood was an old and worn one, but one far from the middle of town and with quite a view of the entire school—well worth the small trek it had taken to get here, for a sniper.

A quick flick of dark fingers to assure that the safety was still on; a twist and pull, tugging free muzzle and then the barrel; another flick of the fingers and the tranquilizer dart (just in case) popped out; a snap to pull off the targeting reticule, and her neatly compartmentalized rifle slipped into her backpack. Not nearly as powerful as some of the other guns she had, but far more portable. Handguns were nice, but she felt naked without something… stronger.

"He slipped behind an alley, and never came out." Her left eye glowed a deep sullen red as she pointed at spot their newest sensei had disappeared from. "See the window at that bakery over there?" Of course Kaede couldn't, not with human eyes, but that didn't matter. "Its reflection lets me see into the alley. He's not there anymore."

Kaede sighed and raised a hand to her forehead. "The Headmaster won't be happy to hear that you've lost him, you know."

Mana resisted the urge to snarl at her classmate, instead closing her eyes. It wasn't easy to do this when there wasn't adrenaline rushing through her body. At least, not without alerting everyone to what she was doing, which certainly wasn't an option when tracking down Uzumaki, whatever his powers were.

A single breath, slow and deep. Not calming—calm wasn't the point of the exercise. Focus was, and focus is what she achieved, because Mana always got what she aimed for. She looked into herself, _reached_ into herself, and grabbed a hold of a part of herself that she had hidden away long ago and pulled it free in its entirety.

'_Perhaps 'hidden away' isn't quite accurate_' Mana thought as her left eye's pupil elongated into a slit. A dark red light shone through the pupil, tracing the movement of her head with a single glowing line, a marked change from the sullen glow from earlier. _'Considering that I use my eye quite a lot. But as for the rest of my body… how long has it been, since I have been whole?_' A long time, certainly. Not to say that she missed it—she had willingly given up that form to stay with her Magister, and if she had her way would never return to it.

But it was uncomfortable, bringing back only a part of her old form.

Mana turned her gaze towards Mahora, the glowing residue from her eye following the motion of her head. There was magic everywhere, of course, but so much more concentrated around those that could make use of it. She knew the magi of Mahora were powerful, of course, but it was so much more clear when she could see them glowing from the magic wrapped around them.

Negi was easy to find—where others shone brightly, he was a sunrise. Mana smiled—little was of greater thrill than fighting a strong enemy, and Negi promised to be a very enjoyable opponent. Still, while he had power, he was untrained. She hoped he would begin training for combat soon, but she could wait. Patience, at least, was something she had in spades.

Konoka was with him—not a surprise, as she or Asuna often was. It really was a pity her parents didn't want Konoka to be involved with magic. Mana couldn't blame them for that, but she held even more magic than Negi did. She would have liked to see what that could become. When the two of them were near each other they were almost blinding to look at.

The Headmaster was, of course, in his office—his light, though not so great in raw power as Negi or Konoka, was much more refined. Of course, she had known he was a powerful mage the moment she met him—demonfolk such as she could simply tell.

As for Evangeline… with as much power as Negi and more years than the Headmaster, it was clear that she was the single most powerful being in Mahora. Except, perhaps, for the World Tree, which to her demonic eyes seemed to be made _of_ light. Whatever lied below its roots, Mana could never tell—it was too bright to see what lay beneath the giant tree.

The forest in which Evangeline lived had a great many more lights within than usual. She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun (though only her human eye had any trouble with the light of the slowly setting sun) and peered towards the forest—ah. Those were spells, not mages. But when had those been there? She didn't remember Evangeline having so many spells hidden within the woods.

Mana briefly debated whether it was something she should concern herself over. While the spells might be a danger, directly confronting the Dark Evangel over them could be much more of one. She quietly resolved to tell the Headmaster about it (demanding a small fee for giving the information, of course—business, after all) and set up flyers by the Tatsumiya Shrine about avoiding the forest.

Decision made, she once again turned to look for Uzumaki. It was difficult work, and she was glad Kaede was quiet while she was hunting. She didn't know what power Uzumaki used, so she had to take at least a quick glance at every glow she saw, be it mage, martial artist, or demonkin. Mahora being Mahora, there were no shortages of any of these (although Mana was glad that those with demonic energy were fewest. Not that demons were bad, but they belonged in their homeworld or the magical world, not this one. She made note to deport that rat demon that somehow snuck in—probably too minor for the wards to notice, but a job was a job, after all). But not a single light was Uzumaki.

Surely he wasn't a mundane. Not that they couldn't cause trouble or be dangerous, but that wasn't something the Headmaster would have needed her and Kaede to follow. Plenty of others had the skill necessary to track an ordinary person—others who did _not_ have unfinished homework.

She began to despair of finding him—at least, of finding him before their next class. But, just as she was about to call it quits, she saw something. It was dark—something she had never seen before with her eye.

"Kaede, look at the base of the mountains—the ones you go to on the weekend. Do you see anything strange?" She didn't want to stop using her demonic eye (such a bother turning it back on!) but she had to know what it looked like to a more human eye.

"Hmm… nothing unusual. Was there anything in particular you were looking for?" Kaede said in response.

Mana turned to her companion. It was odd, looking at someone closely like this—well, odd considering it had been so long since she sealed away her body. To see both the glow of power and the actual image of Kaede herself was different from the lengthy distances she usually used her eye for. "There is something there—as though it was trying to shine, but a great shroud had been laid upon it."

Kaede nodded thoughtfully. She looked towards the mountains, peering with her nearly-closed eyes as though staring more would reveal more information. "That doesn't sound like anything I know of. Even Evangeline's power is still fully present, from all descriptions—the school merely prevents her from being able to touch it." The tall girl spun to face Mana once more, her long ponytail crossing over her shoulder. "Do you believe it has to do with Naruto-kun?"

"Yes," Mana said. It was curt, true, but Mana didn't feel like explaining more. The conflicting urge to go nearer to the beshadowed light and to flee from it was… odd. Uncomfortable. Unfamiliar.

"Should we follow him, then?"

Normally Mana would be appreciative that Kaede deferred to her superior experience in such matters, but not today. She needed to get closer to that light, pull it out of the shadows, and bask in its heat—no, she needed to leave the city, to get away from it. No, she needed it, its warmth—

"No!" Kaede looked at Mana in shock at her outburst. Mana took a deep breath to steady her thoughts—the exhale before pulling the trigger—and pushed the alien thoughts away. Neither option was possible, and she _would not_ let feelings like that interfere with her mission.

Taking into account the time, the distance the target was from them, and his (few) activities throughout the day… "No. It won't be necessary. The Headmaster wants us to keep an eye on him and make sure he's not up to any trouble—he hasn't caused any yet, and we can watch him from here. He won't be able to hurt anyone from over in the mountains, so we won't need to interfere to protect the civilians. There isn't any need to get closer."

Kaede sighed. "This is why you chose this spot to stalk him, isn't it?"

Mana turned to give her friend a curious stare.

"All there is for me to do here is fetch things for you. I can't help keep watch at all," she clarified.

Mana smirked. "Go get my sniper rifle from my room. Oh, and make sure to grab the shopping list off the counter. I'm definitely not using you to avoid monotonous hours of grocery shopping. I wouldn't abuse power like that…the Headmaster put me in charge for a reason, after all."

Fortunately, the rock Kaede threw at Mana's head wasn't bulletproof.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>

Thanks for coming back to this story after the long wait. Sorry for taking so long to finish this chapter—I started it once the spring semester started, but I took too much on my plate ended up hardly completing any of it. I'm trying to do better now, though.

Want to know a really interesting piece of trivia about Kū Fei and Chao Lingshen? In China, they follow the same naming pattern as in Japan—family name first, given name last. In the original Japanese, however, our favorite mangaka puts their names in the western order! This is because he thought Kū Fei and Chao Lingshen sound better than Fei Kū and Lingshen Chao. Seriously, that's the only reason he did it. I love Ken Akamatsu so much (See? I can do it too!). When the volumes were translated to English, every character's names were put into Western order, but Kū Fei and Chao Lingshen stayed the same.

Anyways… small bit of cultural information now! You probably already know this, but depending on what genre of manga you typically stick to you might not. I'm making up most of the stuff about Mahora, to flesh out the school and city more than it already has been.

In typical Japanese schools, the clubs are started by and managed by the students, who plan out the activities and basically do all the stuff. Normally every club has an advisor (even if they don't show up in the anime or manga the club is in), but in Mahora they don't—largely because there are just too many students for the teachers to keep up. However, clubs with extraordinary students always have one of the magic-aware sensei watching over them. But even the clubs without an advisor get checked in on occasionally by a teacher—they don't completely throw the students to the wind!

Dextromethorphan is a medicine that tells the mind that it should stop coughing (it is a type of antitussive), and is often used to stop colds in conjunction with other medications like antihistamines, cough suppressants, and decongestants. Comes in a pill.

Paradox… well, that's been covered so often is so many different mediums I don't think I need to explain what it is. However, how a paradox is resolved (if it can be) differs in many mediums. I'm not going the universe-falls-apart route; rather, the individual around which the paradox is focused is erased from existence, and reality goes on as if she had never existed and never interacted with anyone and never gone back in time in the first place. Like dying, but no soul is left and no one is there to mourn her passing.

**Mazoku**: The parts the word is formed from in Japanese mean devil (ma) race (zoku), although the 'ma' can also be the shortened form of 'mahou' (magic), so either works (or both, considering how many double-meanings there are in Japanese). The name comes from transliterations of Hindu Asura and Yaksha and the Zoroastrian Daeva (to differentiate them from the Christian concept of a demon/devil and from Japan's own oni). In fiction, they can be… pretty much anything, being used however the author wants, often without many similarities between them.

(Thank you Wikipedia!)

In this story, however, they are a class of a demon; it has already been mentioned in the manga that, aside from being different kinds of demons, there are different classes of demons. The Mazouku in my story could be called the nobility and royalty of the demon world, and consist of several different types of demons. They are, of course, not inherently evil, regardless of the origin of the name.


	6. Take Me Away

**Disclaimer:**

I own neither Naruto nor Negima! Magister Negi Magi/Mahou Sensei Negima (take your pick of the name). These are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and Ken Akamatsu, respectively. Likewise, I do not possess any characters from other stories or other mediums of storytelling that may or may not be referenced in this fictional piece.

Chapter title comes from _Take Me Away_ by Globus, part of Immediate Music.

Beta'd by Marquis Black.

Enjoy!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 6:<strong>

**Take Me Away**

Naruto curled deeper into a ball under his blanket, instinctively recoiling from the poking of Zazie's finger.

Zazie hadn't really cared about which part of the bunk bed Naruto chose, but he had taken the unoccupied bunk on the bottom. It hardly mattered to her—she didn't understand why so many of the other students argued over who got which—but it was nice that the issue got settled quickly, she supposed.

She perched at the head of the bed, trying to ignore the blood that had begun oozing from Naruto after he had fallen asleep. It was still dark, at least three hours before their alarm clock was to go off, but she didn't feel tired in the least. Dream demons such as she slept only for the enjoyment of it—and, of course, to dream. The name may not have made that part clear.

Naruto had not come home until quite late that night—far after dark. Zazie had already slipped out to see what dreams she could catch, and it was only luck that she came back in through the front door. She would have to be careful—she wasn't used to having people around and wouldn't want to be caught exiting and entering through the window on the 6th floor. He was dirty, with chips of bark in his hair and grass stains on his hands, but his clothes were clean enough. After a quick (and one-sided) discussion about sleeping arrangements he had fallen upon the lower bunk and quickly drifted off.

A close inspection of her finger revealed no wound and none of the dripping blood she had expected. Odd, considering what had happened last night. Zazie dropped her hand again to brush against Naruto's forehead, careful not to try to peer into his dreams. Not yet.

She couldn't hide her shudder at the thought—and didn't try to, for no one was around to hide it from. Zazie deeply wanted to see what this strange boy, so foreign even to her, dreamed of. The need to know almost hurt—where was he from? She got only a small hint of it in her brief glimpse into his mind, but it was certainly no place she heard of. Why did she feel drawn to him, yet repulsed at the same time?

But she didn't dare to look again. Not after that brief glimpse she had seen of that… thing.

Pain rushed through her hand like fire. Zazie bit her lip to keep from crying out as she drew back her hand. Blood dripped down her fingers, falling onto sheets that covered the boy beside her and mingling with the red dripping from the cuts across Naruto's body.

It was the skin contact that hurt her—but she had followed him the day before, and had seen Asuna (such interesting, confusing dreams the girl had) grab his hand without harm. Perhaps touch was only painful while he was asleep? Or was it her own demonic nature that made it so?

Naruto gave a quiet moan, almost as if he could hear her thinking about him. Zazie's gaze dropped to her new roommate. Her gasp, even so close to silence as it was, filled the room—the skin where she had touched began to peel away. Blood coursed to the surface of Naruto's skin and dripped down his face, causing Naruto to again let loose a muffled sound of pain.

She pulled her hands to her chest and carefully slid off the bed, so as not to touch him again. She did not know why he bled at her touch, but Zazie had no wish to further harm her teacher—he suffered enough from… whatever it was. Even if he were to heal again come morning, as he did last night, it was a pain she would spare the boy if she could.

Perhaps… perhaps she would not go on the class field trip. It would be fun to spend more time with her classmates, but finding out more about her new roommate could be more important.

Maybe she would go to the Magical World. It had been a long time since she had last seen her sister. Twins were not meant to be separated for such lengths of time.

Decision made, Zazie walked over to the closet and quietly slid a washcloth out from the small pile of bathing materials. She didn't know how to stop the gashes that tore themselves open across Naruto's body, and she didn't dare to touch him after what she had seen.

But perhaps she could clean the wounds, and hope that she didn't make things worse. Beyond that, she could only watch till he awoke.

It was, perhaps literally, the least she could do.

* * *

><p>The door before him was absolutely ordinary. It had the same dimensions and measurements as every other door in the dormitories. The hinges were well oiled, there were no serious scuff marks or scratches upon it, and it was of the same rich wood as every other door. A metal plaque beside the door had two names etched into it (at least Naruto assumed they were names), with a third scribbled onto the bottom with permanent marker.<p>

None of this could explain why Naruto found the door to be such a formidable boundary.

Naruto tried to call out to those within, to ask if he could enter, but when he opened his mouth he couldn't get the words past his tongue. When he raised his fist to knock upon the door (did these people even know that knocking on a door meant? Or did the people here do something else?), he found that he couldn't complete the motion.

A growl built up in Naruto's throat as he spun to pace in front of the door to Negi's room. He restrained it, but couldn't hold back the anxiety so easily.

How could he just enter and ask someone he hardly knew to teach him? Naruto had already shown that he was weak—before the Headmaster who was concerned that he would be dangerous to the school, before Takamichi who was much too kind to someone he hardly knew. It was dangerous to go here, to Negi's home, and admit his ignorance.

Knowledge was power, and those who didn't have power would be controlled and fed upon by those who did. It was a lesson Naruto had been forced to learn after the Hokage died. Danzō and the Kyuubi had proven to be apt teachers.

He hated it, as much as he hated them, but it was true.

But… he wouldn't be able to hide this weakness long, not in a school. Naruto needed to learn how to read to help teach, to keep his job, to keep his new home. Negi, at least, didn't know of his other flaws—or at least, Naruto hoped he didn't. Naruto didn't know how much Takamichi had told him.

Naruto raised his hand to knock on the door—however, the door wasn't there. In its place was a girl. Her hair was long and black, dropping straight down her back, and she gave him a curious stare that quickly turned to a look of recognition.

"Ah! Good morning, Naruto-sensei," she said. A smile crossed her face—almost as if she were actually happy to see him. Asuna really had been right about her roommate—Konoka had the most open expression he had ever seen. "Please, come in! There's already tea on the stove, so please, sit."

Konoka turned to look up into an alcove in a corner of the room. "Negi-kun! Naruto-sensei is here."

"Naruto-san?" Negi stuck his head out of the alcove to look down onto the room proper, his red hair sticking out in various directions. "Ah! Good morning. Sorry about the mess—"

The girl giggled at Negi's just-out-of-bed hair. "No he's not. He never gets out of his pajamas until the very last moment, so he always looks this mussed up in the morning."

"K-Konoka-san!" Negi said, hopping down from the alcove, "Naruto-san and I have to… um… talk about the day's assignments. Could we please have a moment alone?"

Konoka laughed and shook her head at Negi's obvious attempt to get away from her teasing, but nevertheless headed over to the door. "I'll go see how the twins are doing. Fūka and Fumika might need help with their hair… although not quite as much as I think you do, Negi-kun. See you in class, sensei!"

With that, she left. Negi ran his hands through his hair and muttered some words Naruto didn't quite understand.

"What was that?" Naruto asked.

"I j-just asked how you felt about your first day of class," Negi said, somewhat nervously. "I tried to find you after it ended, but you had disappeared."

Naruto chuckled and rubbed at the back of his head. He had a fair bit of thinking to do, after talking with Asuna. Wandering across Mahora was interesting—especially considering that he wasn't fresh out of another world and confused. Well, he was still confused, but not in such a bad way.

The World Tree was... big. Well, he called it that, but Naruto didn't think the word quite grasped how immensely tall the World Tree was. The base of the tree was larger than most buildings—wider than the Hokage's Tower, even—and the plant rose impossibly high, its top leaves brushing against the sky. There might have been larger trees in the hearts of the forests of Konoha, but Naruto wouldn't have bet money on it (not that he really had any money yet, but that was beside the point).

He hadn't gone near the World Tree since he had arrived here (and had been rather distraught at the time), and thought that the most notable landmark in the city was something he should see now. But when he had gone to touch it he had felt… warm. On the inside. Not like the fox, but just… warm, in someplace empty that he didn't know had been cold.

It had been nice.

But why? Why had it felt so comfortable, so right, to touch it? Naruto had grown wary of the strange feelings, and fled from the tree.

It turned out to be a good thing he had—he ended up running right out of Mahora and into the forest that bordered so much of the campus. Which had, of course, provided an excellent reason to start training—something he had done precious little of since arriving in this world.

"I was looking around the city," Naruto said, realizing that he had spent too long thinking. Regular conversation was harder than he remembered it being. "Although I couldn't find any ramen stands near the school."

"The best food isn't near the buildings where classes are held." Negi stood and walked over to a desk against the wall, where he grabbed a folded paper leaning against a cup of pencils. Negi unfolded it, revealing a map of Mahora, which someone had gone over and inked in with a lot of smiley faces.

"Konoka's been working on this since before I got here. It shows all the restaurants she likes—and she's a really good cook, so she knows good food when she tastes it!" Negi nodded fervently at his own statement. He pointed towards the map, showing Naruto the largest clusters of smiley faces. "Here—a lot of the restaurants group around the dormitories and train stations. They can catch the most students that way—they know the students aren't going to stick around the school any longer than necessary."

"Makes sense," Naruto said, although he didn't really get it. Wouldn't they just go out of their way to get to the tasty stuff? He nearly salivated at the thought—he'd actually get a paycheck now, which meant he could go out to eat!

But that wasn't the point of this visit—as useful as the conversation had been. "Look, Negi, there's something I need to ask you."

Negi folded up the map and set down at the floor table, motioning for Naruto to do the same. "Ask away—we're coworkers now, after all." Negi smiled. "We're supposed to help one another out, right?"

Well… yeah. He supposed they were. Naruto wondered what all that entailed—he had never worked with another person before. "The Headmaster told me that there was a lot of work necessary to get me this job, but I need help to keep it." Naruto took a steadying breath—why did saying this have to be so difficult? "I can't read."

Naruto could clearly make out the creaking of doors and the pattering of footsteps. Students yawning as the pulled themselves out of bed, and the rustling of sheets and clothes. Someone was cooking something, and it sizzled in its pan—the cooker must have touched it, because a pained yelp reached his ears soon after, and the sound of another girl commiserating with her pain while trying to stifle laughter. It was easy to make out the sounds, because Negi was silent.

"Can't read? But—do you have dyslexia? What about your schooling?" Negi's voice was forced, as though he had a hard time understanding the situation.

"Have dis…dyx—what?" What the hell was that? "Going to school is expensive, unless your family can pay for it. I got by on an orphan fund for a while, but then I… had to move. And it's not like just anyone can go to school, y'know."

Honestly! Did Negi think that just any kid could go to an actual school? There were the ninja academies, of course—the village paid for the students there until they could earn their own money—but other than that you had to be born into a family with money or connections—like the nobility, or a clan, or a merchant family.

Negi's eyes widened, and his voice was touched by… anger? Surprise? Naruto couldn't tell. "B-but everyone deserves to get an education! What about the government? How can they expect you to be a good citizen if you can't read? Of course, that's assuming your own world has modern sensibilities."

Negi's voice took on an introspective turn. "But Mundus Magicus can be rather backwards at times, and considering that your own world must not be nearly as closely connected with Mundus Vetus it's likely that a fair number of modern social advancements haven't touched your own home." Negi waved his hands nervously. "But that's, um, pure conjecture. I'm certain your world has a wonderful culture!"

Naruto stared at his fellow teacher. "What in the Sage's name did you just say?" What the hell did that even mean? Why couldn't Negi talk like a normal person?

Negi coughed into his hand. "Sorry. Basically, the law requires that everyone gets an education here. Well, almost everyone—not every country has those laws, or enforces them—but the most modernized will actually pay for the schooling if a student of his family can't afford it."

"D-d-does this mean I have to go to school?"

"You're, um, already going to school. Just on the other side of the desk."

"That's not what I meant!"

Negi gave a quiet laugh. "I know! Sorry for teasing you, Naruto-san."

"It's just Naruto!"

He raised his hand to his chin and frowned, ignoring the blond teacher. "I don't think you'll have to, actually. I can cover what we are doing in class each day so you'll have a basic grasp of what will happen before class starts. There's plenty for you to do that doesn't require you to read—like grading multiple choice. We always need someone to do that. You can also do parts involving speaking in English… hm… perhaps more days where they can't use Japanese until class is over?"

"Wait a minute," Naruto said. "Did you forget something? I don't know anything about English!"

Negi smiled at him. "You do, actually. We've been speaking it since Konoka-san left."

Naruto stared at him. He… he had? Naruto spat out nonsensical sentences, trying to listen to them—and there it was. It didn't sound like Japanese or his own language, so he supposed it had to be English. Naruto licked his lips and spoke, trying deliberately to switch to Japanese. "I hadn't noticed at all."

His comment was met with a nod. "I thought you wouldn't. You said you hadn't noticed earlier when you met Takamichi and suddenly understood Japanese. You heard jabbering before you understood—I'm guessing you need to hear at least one full sentence of the language before you get it—and you have to really hear it."

"You didn't understand Takamichi at first, but you must have heard other people in the city speaking Japanese, even if you were in an alley—you just weren't paying attention to what they said." Negi shrugged, a small smile on his lips. "That was mostly a guess, but seeing how easily you understood what I said—and there's no reason for you to quickly understand English but take days to get Japanese—it only makes sense that your own attention prompts quicker language assimilation."

Naruto gaped at Negi. Takamichi hadn't been kidding about the genius bit, had he? "That's—I didn't even know that! How did you do that?"

Negi blushed. "I just put a lot of thought into it, I guess. After all, you've had to think about the entire new world, and I only have to deal with you—I bet you would have thought of it if you had time!"

Naruto brushed the comment aside, although not without difficulty. It grated that someone else had figured out the rules to _his_ ability, even if it was one that he had never known about before. "Now, if only we could figure out what it is, and why I have it."

"Sort of the million dollar question, isn't it?" Negi agreed, a speculative look on his face. "Unfortunately, I don't think I could answer it. There are some universal translation spells—but those only exist in the gateways between Mundus Vetus and Mundus Magicus, and only teach a single language. They don't just… soak stuff up like you do."

Naruto nodded, although he didn't really understand what Negi had said, other than that he couldn't be learning it from a spell. Apart from that, Naruto didn't have a clue either. "At least with this I won't need to learn to read. I already know English, so no need, right?"

"I didn't say that!" Damn. "You still have to learn, you know. You can't do anything in the world today without knowing how to read. But don't worry, I can teach you!" Negi, stupid Negi, actually looked _excited_ at the idea. "But first, let's discuss today's class."

* * *

><p>"Stand! Bow!"<p>

Negi slid the door open, and Naruto was impressed to find 3-A standing and waiting for them. After yesterday, Naruto hadn't thought that the class could actually work together long enough to do something as complicated as that.

He wasn't very impressed by the blackboard eraser falling towards Negi's head, though. Using the door to keep the eraser hanging until the door opened was easy, and fun for first impressions, but considering that they had arrived on time and he knew the trick had been used on Negi before (of course it had! Someone had tried to do it to Naruto earlier, so obviously Negi had been targeted before too), it was just in bad taste.

It was easy enough to pluck it from the air before Negi noticed. When the other teacher turned around, Naruto just gave him a grin. Smiles were good—everybody liked them. They calmed people down and made them like you.

But Negi gave him a stare—a somewhat disturbed stare, it seemed to Naruto—before heading to his desk and pulling out a thick binder. The other teacher gave the class a quick glance (Naruto thought he was checking to be certain they weren't in the process of exploding) before turning his attention to the sheaves of paper he pulled from the binder.

Naruto stepped forwards into the classroom. Thirty-one pairs of eyes focused on him. Naruto swallowed, hoping that his nervousness didn't show.

He focused on his words, making certain that they came out in the unusual-sounding tones of English. "Be seated," Naruto said, only barely resisting stumbling over the words—not because of the different language, but because they kept _staring_ at him!

Scraping sounds were the only response as the students sat back into their seats, their eyes still on their teacher.

Naruto coughed, feeling like he had a toad in his throat. Or maybe an entire family of them—summon toads, not the normal kind. "Alright," he said, still speaking in English, "We didn't get a chance to introduce ourselves yesterday, so let's spend today on that. Tell me your name, likes, dislikes and so on."

There was a moment of confusion as the students whispered to one another, trying to figure out what he said—apparently, they weren't very good at English—before a general sigh of relief flowed from the class as they sagged in their seats. Naruto understood—an entire day of class where they didn't have to do… well, anything, except talk once. Attention was no longer focused solely on him, something Naruto was profoundly grateful for.

Before Naruto could pick someone to start, one of the students selected herself. "Ooh! Ooh, can I go first sensei? I wanna go first!" a girl with reddish-pink hair said. She leaped to her feet and looked at him eagerly. Her eyes sparkled in excitement. "I'm Sasaki Makie from Gymnastics! I like cute things, like Negi-sensei and kitties, and I don't like slimy stuff like—"

Naruto coughed, cutting her off. "English only for today."

Makie slumped, and the shine left her eyes as quickly as the color left her face. The class collectively un-sighed, and there was a desperate scrabble as everyone began flipping through their Japanese-English dictionaries as quickly as they could.

"I was… Makie Sasaki… I are with… uh… gum…" Makie glance desperately at Naruto, tears half-filling her eyes. He could see that she was the type to cry easily, but it was sort of funny—did that make him a bad person? But after a drawn out pause, he gave her two minutes to look through her book for words. It didn't help.

Naruto couldn't hold back a snort of laughter as Makie described herself as a greasy cat, although it was disguised by the teasing from the rest of the class—at least, until he reminded them that it was English only. He pointed towards another of the girls, this one in the front row.

Then another student stood up to introduce themselves, and another, and Naruto could feel the tension flowing out of him. 3-A laughed at the funnier misspellings, and Naruto along with them, and occasionally Naruto would break his own rule about 'English only' to tell them just what it was they had said about themselves (Asuna and one Kū Fei had both managed to compare themselves unfavorably to fish. Naruto had no idea what they thought they were trying to say).

Naruto felt a tugging at his lips, and was surprised to find his mouth had curled into a small smile. When was the last time he hadn't smiled on purpose but just… smiled? He couldn't remember, and as he corrected Nagase Kaede's pronunciation (Negi had taught him that word) of 'relax', Naruto found that he didn't really care. Being here was just too interesting and needed him to pay too much attention to the girls for him to worry about anything else. It was too fun for that.

Not all of the class was funny, but Naruto still found himself paying attention to every student. They spoke English differently from Negi (and, Naruto supposed, from himself, since he had learned if from Negi), with odd accents and difficulties saying certain sounds.

Some students spoke it more fluently, though; Evangeline McDowell (and Naruto had blinked at the name—that didn't sound like any name he had ever heard before!) introduced herself without wasting time and with only one sentence before sitting again, looking annoyed that she had needed to do it in the first place. Naruto didn't think she was used to actually introducing herself to people. The class representative also spoke English well, with a hardly noticeable accent, as did Satomi Hakase and the shy girl whose hair covered her eyes, Miyazaki Nodoka. Chao Lingshen had the exact same accent Negi did, even though her name sounded completely different from Negi and Evangeline's type of name.

Naruto pointed to the last student. She stood and stared at him blankly before speaking. "Zazie Rainyday. Magic and Acrobatics Clubs. Nightmare Circus. Dislike mysteries." Zazie's voice was quiet and hoarse from disuse, and without his enhanced hearing Naruto doubted he would have been able to make out more than an indistinct mumble. She sat down as soon as she finished her introduction (the shortest of all of 3-A, even considering that Evangeline said only a single sentence).

Naruto mentally added the Magic and Acrobatics Clubs to his list of things he would need to look into later. He still needed to find a club after all, and he wanted to find out more about his quiet roommate.

Had she mentioned something else with those clubs? Naruto dismissed the idea—of course she hadn't.

A quick look towards the weird twelve-hour clock confirmed that class was about to end. Weird—he almost felt regretful, which was ridiculous because who would be sad that school was ending? Naruto glanced over the class, making certain he had the names and faces matching up—no, no he didn't. But at least he would be able to recognize any of the thirty students when he met them, which was more than he could have said before class began.

'_Wait. Thirty students?_' Naruto counted the students again—yeah, only thirty were there. There were thirty-one on the class roster, though. Then again, no one had been listed as absent. Probably a mistake.

"Class should be over in a few minutes," Naruto said, returning to speaking Japanese. It sounded a lot like his language, and was much more comfortable to speak in. "But since we've got the introductions out of the way, let's just call it quits now and get out early." The class roster probably just hadn't been updated in a while.

Negi's spluttering objections were drowned out by the loud cheer of 3-A, and Naruto had to leap back beside Negi's desk to avoid the stampede of students. However, a few of the girls pulled out from the horde to step up to the teachers. Nodoka, flanked by another two girls (Ayase Yue and Saotome Haruna? Maybe?) approached Negi and began to softly talk to him about books, which Naruto ignored—their books weren't important since he couldn't read.

Makie and two smaller girls, identical to one another—the Narutaki twins—came over to talk to Naruto, to his surprise. "Wow! You speak English really well!" Makie said, her voice once more chipper and bubbling with inexplicable happiness. Naruto wondered what it was that she was so excited about. "I'm sorry! I didn't get to finish my introduction earlier, so—"

The twin on the right reached up to pull on Makie's hair, eliciting a squeak from the taller girl. The Narutaki shook her head, making the two small ponytails sway. "We don't have time for that Makie, we gotta get to club or Kaede will punish us again!"

The other twin shook her head, her own hair tied up in two buns. "Onē-chan, Kaede-nē won't do anything to Makie. She's not in the Strolling Club."

Strolling Club… it sounded boring, so he probably wouldn't like to be there—but on the other hand, it also sounded easy to manage. Naruto made another mental note to check out the clubs.

"I know that. I was talking about us, Fumika!"

"Oh, right! I'm so sorry, Fūka!" Makie sounded only a little sorry, actually, and mostly cheerful. "Have you figured out what groups we're going to be put in for the field trip?"

"Negi's working on that," Naruto said, although he was really just guessing. Negi looked like he'd be working on it, so he was probably right, wasn't he? "He's known you longer than I have, so I'm not much help knowing who to put with who."

Fumika coughed to catch Naruto's attention. "Naruto-sensei, it's 'whom' when you say it like that."

"Oh. Thanks," Naruto said, although he didn't really know the difference.

Makie nodded her head. "Right! I'll go tell everyone you aren't done yet. See you later, Naruto-kun!" With that, she spun and ran out the door. Naruto wondered if he was supposed to tell her to stop running in school—it was stupid rule anyways.

There was a thud outside. "Hey, watch it," Naruto heard one of the students say, although he couldn't put a name to her voice. Maybe there was a good reason for that running rule after all.

"Sorry Misora! See you tomorrow!"

"Hey! You can't just—" Whatever Misora was going to say was cut off by her sigh. "Whatever." She pulled open the door to look into the classroom, tossing a look to the twins who were still standing in front of Naruto. "It's finished, we can go now."

"Right!" "Okay," said the twins together as they scampered out of the room after the other girl. "Bye sensei!"

Naruto looked back at the desk to see if Negi had finished talking to the girls, although judging by the diagrams he was starting to make on the chalkboard he wouldn't be for some time. Judging this to be as good a time as any, he stepped out of the room.

He didn't complete the step, carefully drawing his foot back to avoid setting off the tripwire stretched across the doorway. Naruto followed the wire up the wall, where a bucket of water was hanging from the "Class 3-A" sign above the door. Naruto sighed, and set about disarming the too-simple trap.

'_Using this sort of prank on me… feels sort of insulting, actually.' _

Naruto heard a faint voice from the room behind him, and turned to look—but none of the four people in the classroom were speaking, Negi focusing on writing up some elaborate equation and the three girls focusing on what Negi was doing. Naruto frowned—it didn't look like anyone had said anything.

A chill ran down Naruto's spine, as he focused on taking down the bucket—not that it required it, but he focused on it anyways to ignore the tingling feeling in his back.

With Naruto's focus and the noise from the chalkboard as Negi began explaining calculus to his students, no one heard the quiet, half-present voice that mumbled out its own introduction.

"Aisaka Sayo—ike twirling penci—slike being alone—nt a friend—"

* * *

><p>"Argh! How? How does he do it?" Kasuga Misora cried out, falling to her knees in anguish.<p>

"M-Misora, please stop being melodramatic, you'll set off Fūka!" Fumika pleased, tossing a glance towards her fellow pinkette sulking in the back of the room.

What had once been a classroom had been relegated to a storage room, with dozens of spare desks and tables and chairs dimly lit by only partially maintained lights. Some of the old furniture was damaged and simply had yet to be thrown away, but most of the items in the room were still in good condition. It was rarely used, and had been a favorite near-school hangout for the three for almost two years.

Fūka hopped off of the desk to march over to her sister, because it wasn't fun to rant on her lonesome. "He must be cheating! There's no way we could have missed him that much!" she exclaimed, pointing her finger towards the ceiling to emphasize her point. "Maybe Sakurako could be that lucky, but Naruto-sensei couldn't possibly be able to avoid them all like that!"

"Then, um, maybe we should stop?" Fumika hesitantly offered. "I-I mean, we can't catch him anyways, so maybe we should quit before he gets mad and—"

"No!" Fūka and Misora cried out as one.

"Come on! We can't let him beat us like that! Kasuga Misora accepts defeat from no one," the tall girl declared, obviously ignoring or conveniently forgetting the very existence of Sister Shankti. The Narutakis had listened to countless rants and bouts of self-pity from Misora about how the nun's sole purpose in life was to prevent Misora from doing anything fun, or to punish her if she dared to enjoy herself in any way, shape, or form.

"Yeah," Fūka agreed as she grabbed Fumika by the shoulders and shook her, as though the motion would help drive the notion into her younger twin's head. "Aren't you the smartest one here? Don't we only get so much done because you can plan things out so well? How can you just let the new teacher on the block get away with outdoing you like that?"

Fumika wriggled under her companions-in-crime's stares. "B-but what if Naruto-sensei gets really upset at us?"

Misora laughed. "Come on, he's a kid. Negi never got too angry, did he?"

A hesitant nod conceded the point. "What if he gets help from one of the other teachers and finds out we're the ones causing the pranks? Even if he doesn't get angry, we could still get in trouble. _What if Nitta-sensei makes us sit in the seiza position again?_"

Fūka and Misora paled at the very thought. The elder Narutaki sister wasn't one to be easily sidetracked and quickly got her spirit back, although she shuddered as she spoke. "Th-there's no way that would happen. I bet Naruto-sensei doesn't even know who he is! We just need to be careful not to do anything when Nitta-sensei might be nearby. And besides, there's no way a newbie teacher like him could catch us anyways!"

Fumika shrugged uncomfortably, due as much to being worried about it going wrong as it was to the faint twinges of her competitive spirit. It was but an ember, but one that her sister periodically made the effort to fan into a small flame and as such hadn't yet died out (despite Fumika's attempts to stamp it out before it got her into trouble).

The shrug did not go unnoticed by her twin, and Fūka leaned closer to Fumika to give her a sly grin. "Come on, we're the Narutaki twins! We can beat him."

Fumika gulped, but nodded as she was, once again, roped into her sister's schemes. She was a little disturbed by how little she objected when Fūka started trying to get her to help out. It wasn't because she liked pranking, of course.

It wasn't!

Misora, relieved that Fumika was going along with their attempt to really catch their blond sensei, sat down on the nearest desk and leaned back to stare at the ceiling. "So what are we going to do, Fumika?"

Fumika furrowed her brow in thought. Naruto had proven to be a formidable opponent, and nothing they had tried to get him with had worked yet—not that they had had more than a couple days, but they had managed to prank Negi-sensei as soon as they met him.

They had tried the classic chalk-eraser-in-the-door trick (three times, even) but they had missed him. Well, not the one from class—Fumika couldn't believe he actually caught that one! She hoped that it was a fluke, because (as experience with Kaede had shown them) pranking someone with good reflexes was _hard_.

Misora had set up a pail of water to fall on their teacher after class, but Naruto had stepped right over the wires. And then he'd actually pulled the bucket down, ruining their work and the distraction Fūka had tricked Makie into going along with. He ignored the tripwires they had set up in the halls and they hadn't heard anything from the frog they had put in his bed (although, considering that it was Zazie's room… maybe that hadn't been a good idea).

And then there was the naked spelling bee the other day… Fumika couldn't believe he had gotten out of that one. She hadn't seen him leave (she was too busy protecting herself), but Fūka had been disappointed she hadn't been able to stick her panties in Naruto's pocket to label him as being the Mahora panty thief.

Everyone would know he wasn't, of course—someone had been stealing panties since before Naruto got here. And Fūka had already pulled that stunt before—but Naruto didn't know anything about it, and it would be funny to see his face when they confronted him.

And they hadn't had any opportunity at _all_ to use the diarrhetics they bought!

"We need to plan more," Fumika said. "Naruto-sensei isn't falling for any of the normal attacks, so we'll need to work up to it. Wait until he doesn't suspect anything, and then do something more elaborate than normal so he can't escape."

Fūka scowled. "But we can't wait. How can we introduce ourselves to the new teacher if we can't get him first?" Fumika didn't understand what pranking had to do with introducing themselves, but she could, on some bizarre level, understand the sentiment.

Rubbing at her temples, Misora sighed. "We can't, Fūka. Fumika's right; the normal stuff isn't working, so we need to do something bigger."

"Alright," Fūka said, petulant and obviously disappointed that they had to wait. Patience was never her strong suit. "So are we going to do it on the field trip?"

Fumika nodded, trying to keep a smirk off of her lips. Fūka was the sneaky one, not her! Smirks had no place trying to slip onto her face. "With the vacation spirit of the trip, he'll have to let his guard down. And everyone remembers vacations, so it will have a much bigger impact on him."

The idea made Fūka smile as she began to enjoy the thought. "Naruto-sensei will never be able to forget it!" Fūka began to bounce on the tips of her toes—until she saw the clock. "F-Fumika, we gotta go."

"Onē-chan?" Fumika turned to see what had made the color drain from Fūka's face. She paled. "We're late! Kaede-nē will kill us!"

Misora shook her head. "Really, you go on about her all the time, but I just can't see Kaede, of all people, as such a hard-ass. You sure we're thinking of the same Kaede? Ridiculously long ponytail, laid-back, sort of lazy but still manages to get things done?"

"She's a monster!"

"Nē-san wants to kill us all and then make our dead bodies keep running!"

"She'll turn us into zombie twins and make us throw sharp things until our arms fall off!"

"She'll make us sit in seiza for hours on end!"

Sweat-dropping was, Misora supposed, the only reasonable response to their ridiculous allegations. So, as the Narutakis rushed out the door, she did.

"Cocone will love to hear about this."

* * *

><p>"Ugh. This is so boooring."<p>

Quiet giggles leaked out from muffling hands as yet another of Naruto's comments set off the class. Negi gave 3-A a nervous glance—they didn't _look_ like they were going to riot yet—before sending his best glare towards the teacher behind him. Negi was sorely aware that his best glare still wasn't a very intimidating one.

"Naruto-sensei, would you kindly refrain from disrupting the class?" Negi hissed out, trying not to let the girls hear him. It wasn't appropriate for a teacher to reprimand another in front of the entire class (even if Naruto did deserve it).

Naruto's head lay face-down upon the desk at which he sat, covering the (little to no reading necessary) tests he was supposed to be grading. His voice came out muffled as he spoke, "I didn't say anything. You must have read the minds of your students."

The students (also quite thoroughly bored) muttered their agreement. They would be the first to say that Negi was a more interesting teacher than the infamously monotonous Nitta, but math was, as Naruto so eloquently stated, boring.

"Why did we have to substitute for Nitta, anyways? I thought we were supposed to teach English."

Sigh. "We do teach English, but the Mahora Academy Junior High division alone has 25 other 3rd year classes, all the way to 3-Z. We don't teach _all_ of them, and we actually teach proportionally less than most others in the school, so we occasionally have to cover for the other teachers. Such as Nitta-_sensei_," Negi said, stressing the title of his fellow teacher. Naruto seemed nice enough, but he needed to learn to give respect where it was due.

Even so, Negi thought that the other teachers took advantage of having him teach their classes too often. He wasn't upset, exactly—he enjoyed teaching, after all—but it was still annoying that the other teachers gave him their classes so often.

Negi reached out to the projector and replaced the slide with another, demonstrating example proofs. He was glad Nitta had such a strict note-taking policy, if only because it gave him a few moments before he had to start lecturing again.

Naruto grumbled as he picked up the pin and started marking through the tests again. "Why are we doing this today? Yesterday was a lot more interesting. This is just… dull."

It would be a lie to say he disagreed. Negi felt fortunate that he taught foreign language—he didn't think that any other class had as much interaction with the students. "Not every day will be that exciting," Negi said, although he fully expected the first few weeks of Naruto's stay to be nearly so, if his own start at Mahora was anything to go by. "As teachers, we are supposed to do whatever we can to make certain our students learn whatever they may need to succeed. Sometimes, that means games, and sometimes lectures. You have to give them the knowledge before they can use it."

"Oh. Like, you don't just tell the student to stab the target, you tell him where to stab so he'll know how to do it properly?"

If Negi had ever heard a more disturbing analogy, he didn't remember it. "Um… yes." The scraping of pencils ceased, forcing Negi to direct his attention back towards the class as he began to explain how to solve matrix formulae. Despite this, he spoke with only half a mind to the subject, most of his thoughts directed elsewhere—that level of math wasn't at all difficult. He didn't know why some people had trouble with it.

Disconcerting as it was, Naruto's simile—only the latest in a long line of them—did raise questions. Why had the first example Naruto had thought of involved killing? Negi admittedly didn't know what Naruto's world was like, but he doubted that an ordinary school would teach such things.

Naruto had spoken of attending an "Academy". However, less than an hour before he had said that he hadn't had a real education, leading Negi to assume that the Academy was where he learned his predilection towards discussing matters in terms of violence. Which obviously meant that it was not an ordinary school, which in turn meant that Naruto was not an ordinary person.

Of course, he had known that already. But that, in turn, brought Negi back to another question, one he had thought of but had not asked when he met Naruto. What had happened to bring him here? After leaving the teahouse, Naruto had explained that he had been chased because of his birth for political purposes, but Negi didn't think that was the entire truth.

Naruto had mentioned that he hadn't completed the Academy, but if he was of such political significance then surely a faction interested in him would have pushed for him to complete it, if only for appearance's sake. Assuming that he was politically important in a good way—perhaps born to a noble family or famous couple? Negi doubted Naruto failed—he didn't seem to be mentally deficient—and a child couldn't just drop out of school that young. Which meant that something had happened.

And if he was important negatively… well, that brought forth more questions than Negi cared to consider in the middle of class.

Negi reached the end of his lecture. He had been too busy thinking to call out the students, so he took the few minutes before the bell rang to have the students do examples. It was a pleasant surprise to find that Asuna, of all people, had actually managed to get the first problem right. The class applauded her in genuine praise (and more than a few with mockery, but that was just the way 3-A worked).

Ayaka stood up to speak (to say something condescending, no doubt), but Asuna got in the first strike by accusing her of being a pedo (again). Negi tuned out what was happening as the class split in half to watch their argument.

Naruto, however, was still new to Mahora. He scowled as he rose to his feet.

Negi gave look towards to argument to make sure it hadn't gone out of control (it had, but not in a bad way) before turning to prevent Naruto from upsetting the class. Not that upsetting them was bad, but Naruto didn't understand how the class worked. Actually, Negi probably didn't either, but he knew how to not mess up as badly as he could have.

He reached out to grab Naruto's arm. "Wait, Naruto-san! Don't get in there," he said, keeping his voice low so as not to attract the attention of the class.

A strange expression appeared on Naruto's face, and he pulled his arm away from Negi, hard enough to sting his hand. "What do you mean?" Naruto asked, practically hissing. "They can't just start a fight in class!"

Negi nodded. "You're right, but so far as 3-A is concerned, this isn't a fight." Naruto's brow furrowed, so Negi continued his explanation. "It may sound weird, but Asuna-san and Class Rep-san are really important to one another, which is why they argue all the time. They won't really hurt one another," Negi assured him.

Naruto didn't look confident about what Negi said, but he didn't interfere. "Naruto-san, you have to choose your battles," Negi pressed, trying to make Naruto understand. "If you try to stop everything they do, the pressure will build up and the class will explode. This is small—choose which ones are important enough to interfere with. Class is almost over—try to step in now, and you'll have less ammunition to use if they start rioting next time."

It wasn't the best system, but Negi had learned the futility of trying to stop everything they did long ago.

His assistant teacher didn't say anything, which Negi hoped meant he was thinking about what he had said. Naruto was quiet for a moment, watching the two girls trade insults. After watching a particularly impressive attack by Asuna (both verbal and physical), he turned back to Negi. "The Class Rep… is she actually—"

"No," Negi cut in, not wanting Naruto to finish the comment or get any bad ideas. "I don't think she wants to do that. We've been alone together several times, but she never tried anything worse than what has happened already in class."

Actually… that wasn't very reassuring.

But Naruto only nodded, which was a relief. Negi wasn't entirely certain how to explain Ayaka without making her sound bad, which she wasn't. Hopefully Naruto would learn that while he was here.

Seeing nothing that immediately needed his attention, Negi took up his typical end-of-class activities—that is, he watched the class antics. Whatever else there was to say about 3-A (and there was a lot), it was impossible to say that teaching them was boring.

* * *

><p>Ōkōchi Akira loved swimming. Well… that wasn't true. She just loved being in the water—feeling it slide over her skin, surrounding her, buoying her. It was relaxing and peaceful, and for Akira there had never been any option for her other than joining the Swimming Team.<p>

"So, what do you think of our new sensei, Akira?"

Akira didn't roll over to look at her friend, instead floating on her back. Her long, dark hair fanned behind her in the water as she stared up at the clouds. "He seems nice enough, although he hasn't been around long enough for me to say anything else."

Though she said that, she rather liked him. It was cute, how awkward he seemed when class was starting—and he certainly hadn't pretended that math class was fun! Today had been rather interesting too. They hadn't learned anything new—rather, Naruto had them saying tongue-twisters in English, just to get them more used to the sounds. It was difficult, but certainly not boring—and pretty fun, too, once Naruto started stumbling over the sounds right with them.

Akashi Yūna laughed. "Yeah, but he looks as cute as Negi-kun does! They don't act like one another at all, though. I was expecting another kid teacher to be more like Negi-kun, but I don't think Naruto-kun will be as serious."

When Yūna finished speaking, Akira rolled over in the water to face her. Akira returned to an upright position, slowly waving her limbs through the water to keep afloat, while the less water-worthy Yūna clung to the edge of the pool. She was glad the public pool wasn't full today—half her class seemed to want to come, and if there had already been a crowd in the water it might have gotten too full.

Personally, she would have been fine with the school pool—but the others wanted slides, so who was she to ruin their fun?

"Why's that?" Akira asked, trying to recall what about the teacher would give Yūna that impression. Well, he did let them out of class early, and he seemed to get bored very quickly. But Akira didn't think that sort of thing could really be taken as proof that he wasn't taking teaching seriously.

Yūna shrugged as she pushed away from the wall to try to swim alongside her friend. "It's not that I don't think he'll be a good teacher, but he has that smile, y'know? Negi smiles, sure, but not that sort of big grin." Yūna's sentences were cut into choppy fragments as she tried to swim and talk at the same time—but she wasn't as practiced at this as Akira was, and returned to her wall before she swallowed the water.

Akira remembered those smiles. They were easy to notice, the way his whole face got into the smiles and his eyes closed. It was a great smile, and it was hard to dislike it. But… there was something about it, something she couldn't put her finger on.

"Naruto-kun just seems different." Yūna chuckled as a thought came to her mind. "I hope he teaches us more often, 'cause I don't think he's the type to give out homework."

A shadow fell over the two, causing them to look up. "Heh, I thought the same when he first introduced himself," Asakura said, sitting down on the edge of the pool to dip her feet into the water. Her swimsuit (skimpy as ever) was still completely dry. Akira thought that was a shame—what was the point of coming to the pool and not getting in the water?

"It's awesome, that's what it is," Yūna said, pumping her fist. "Light on homework? Even if Negi-kun gives us more to make up for it, we still end up with less, right?" Akira didn't think that it worked that way, but didn't want to kill her friend's mood.

Asakura nodded. "I haven't been able to find out anything about Naruto-sensei yet, so I can't say anything about his teaching style, but he certainly doesn't look like the type that would give us a lot."

Akira reached out to rest against the edge of the pool. She had been swimming for a while, and while she wasn't getting sore Akira thought it would be better to rest before she did. Today was about just enjoying the sensations of the water, not trying to shave another second off her lap time.

"Do you know where he's staying?" Akira asked. "Is he staying with one of us, like Negi-kun, or does he have his own place?" She could think of more than a handful of her fellow students who would be good for watching over a kid—even if Naruto was as mature as Negi. She wouldn't say any names, of course—it was rude to bad-mouth people like that—but she couldn't say that leaving Naruto with certain, less mature, people would be a good idea.

Asakura held up her phone. "Yep. I've got an image of him sleeping right here—looks like he's rooming with Zazie."

Akira didn't know Zazie very well—didn't know anyone other than the Class Rep that did, actually—but she hadn't heard anything bad about her. She hoped that they could become friends, though, like Asuna and Negi had.

She frowned as she remembered how their new teacher had introduced himself. "Asakura, did you notice anything odd about Naruto-sensei?

"Odd? Like what?" Yūna asked.

The newspaper girl looked thoughtful as she kicked her legs over the surface of the water, spraying Akira and Yūna with water. "Well, there is this little bit. I can't find any records of him—like, at all. I've gone online, and I can't find anyone with his name. He's not in any records until the same day we found out about him—no job applications, no references, not even a letter or email sent to the teachers. It's like he didn't exist before he began teaching."

"How do you know about what mail the teachers get?" Yūna's eyes sparkled with mischief, and Akira had to admit that even she could see the possibilities there—although she wouldn't do anything, of course. She reached over and thwacked her friend on the shoulder.

Yūna gave her a sheepish smile as Asakura continued, "But I don't think that's what you were asking about, was it?"

Akira shook her head. "No, but what you had to say is interesting enough. But what did you think about him when you saw him? A couple days ago, when we all did those introductions?"

"It didn't skip my notice that he didn't introduce himself at all. But more than that," Asakura paused, raising a hand to rub at her chin as she frowned, "there was just something 'off' about him. I didn't really pay attention to it at the time, but now that you bring it up…"

Akira nodded as she brought up her own hand to pull away a wet strand of hair that was sticking to her face. "I thought the same when I saw him smile. There was something about it that didn't fit."

Akira felt almost as if she were betraying her teacher to say that, like she was insulting him behind his back. That was one of the worst sorts of things a person could do—but it was true, in this case. Even though his smile had looked so warm, so friendly… there was something about it that worried her. But she couldn't name what it was.

Asakura smirked as she held up her phone and snapped a picture of the two girls in the water. "Well, if there's something weird going on with our new teacher, you can count on me to find it out. I'll strip bare all his secrets over the course of the school trip, you mark my words—for I am the Mahora Paparazzi!"

Somehow, Akira was not relieved.

* * *

><p>Silence hung over the clearing, an inaudible reflection of the calm that covered all inside. The trees were thick, and no wind swept through the branches, leaving the leaves and grass motionless.<p>

A sudden movement marked the end of the stillness, a snap of the arm and a twist of the hand. Quiet whistling ended the silence, of blades cutting through air. The trio of shuriken cracked into the crude target scratched into a tree, less than an inch away from the bull's-eye.

To Naruto, that wasn't good enough. Throwing shuriken, at least, was something he knew how to do already and that meant he had to be better at it. Much better than he was, to make up for not knowing everything else a ninja should know.

Naruto approached the tree and pulled the stuck shuriken back out of it, taking a moment, as he often did, to admire the quality of the weapons Sarutobi had left him. Despite being years old and not having been replaced, a quick polish was all that was needed to make them look brand new.

'_No doubt the Hokage had wanted his weapon to be suitably armed_.' The thought brushed through Naruto's head, coming to the fore once more despite his attempt to bury it in the back of his mind.

Since discovering the circumstances of his birth, everything became tainted by the fox. How wrong was Danzō, to say that he was a weapon? So many of the people of Konohagakure had hated the fox—had the Hokage used that to make Naruto stronger? Was the Hokage the one who was kind to him to try to ensure he was loyal to Konoha?

These thoughts, and far worse, rose up to threaten to drown him. They were wrong—they _had_ to be wrong—Naruto couldn't let them be right, he couldn't think about them without choking, but despite everything the idea remained, festering in the back of his mind.

'_He never cared.'_

Naruto spun to aim towards a new target, to find something to do so he didn't need to think, and in doing so saw one of the other trees he had been using to train these past few days. Naruto shook his head and ruefully pocketed set the shuriken aside. At least he knew how to throw weapons… running up trees was much harder—and took much more focus.

The oak (at least, Naruto thought it was an oak. It looked like one, but was much smaller than the oak trees back in Hi no Kuni) was pockmarked with footprints, as Naruto's chakra had burnt through the wood or caused the bark to shatter under his feet. After having blown the bottoms of his sandals of, he had taken to doing it barefooted, very thankful that the soles of the sandals could reattach to the cloth straps.

It hurt to run up the tree barefoot, but Naruto had found that when he directed his chakra to his feet it stung less and he got less scrapes. Which was certainly a relief—when he was younger, his foot had healed over a small rock, and it removing it had been… unpleasant. Physical pain was different from the dreams.

'_I hope Zazie hasn't noticed anything,'_ Naruto thought, catching his lip in his teeth. '_What does it look like when I sleep? I know about the bleeding—but the blood flows back into my body when I wake up. Do I make noise, or toss about in bed? What if I wake her up?"_

That, at least, didn't seem to have happened yet. Naruto was certain that if someone had found him bleeding out (especially a normal person, like almost everyone on this world seemed to be), there would have been quite the commotion.

Naruto swallowed uneasily. Being found out by an ordinary person would be enough of a problem, but what about one of the mages? Surely they would try to find out why—and with their magic, they might be able to discover the fox.

A shiver ran down his spine, and Naruto wrapped his arms around himself. Negi would be horrified, and Takahata furious, to discover what he was. The Headmaster had already warned him about the safety of the students. If the Headmaster found out about him… Naruto didn't hold any illusions that he might survive. Naruto had seen enough back in Konohagakure to know that without the protection of the Hokage, he would never have made it, regardless of his doubts about the man.

Naruto flared his chakra, wildly and without control, to shove the thoughts from his head. He was trying to stop thinking, damn it! The chakra burst from him and wreathed his body in a blue, flaming testament to the control he wasn't using.

He focused and clasped his hands together into a seal, exercising the chakra control he spent so much time trying to get the hang of, and pulled the extra chakra leaking from his pores back into his body. Not that he really needed to pull it back—a normal person might, with normal amounts of chakra (or large amounts of chakra), but Naruto had so much more than anyone else that it didn't really make a difference to him. However, he was practicing chakra control so it was best to pull it back in.

He focused on the chakra running down his legs and coiling around the bottom of his feet. It was difficult, doing it there, so far away from the center of his chakra system, and uncomfortable, like feathers brushing against his toes.

Naruto dashed forwards, careful not to cling to anything until his foot touched the tree. Chakra pressed against the wood to hold him to it, and Naruto continued his rush up the tree. The chakra clung against the wood for but the briefest moment before his stride pushed him further up the trunk, and Naruto could feel the pressure of it—the chakra between the pressing of his feet and the wood.

Ten steps, and then fifteen—farther than Naruto had managed to run yet. A surge of triumph rushed through him. _He was doing it_—without a teacher at all, he had figured it out, and he was _succeeding_!

But Naruto's chakra control had never been good enough to be called bad, and his chakra reacted to his emotions with a flare of power. Naruto felt the force between his feet and the tree grow, and felt the tree shudder, and the power _compress_—

—And the wood beneath his feet exploded outwards with a sound like thunder, and flung Naruto into the air.

Naruto had a brief glimpse of the tree he had climbed—half of one, now, with splinters and jagged chunks of wood dashing into the earth and forest around it—before smashing into a tree across the clearing. He heard a crack, and the world went black.

Faint whispers flew to his ears. "Sensei!" Odd. It sounded like it should have been louder than that.

Naruto had the time to briefly wonder why that was before consciousness fled.

* * *

><p>"What do you think he was doing?" a girl asked, her voice distant and muted. A dull ache coursed through his head, making the far-off sound painful.<p>

Another voice responded, amusement lacing her tone. "Climbing a tree."

"Oh? I would have said he was running up it, but I suppose it amounts to the same thing." The first girl chuckled. "More specifically, I was wondering how he was doing it. I didn't feel a thing from him. I know you're more sensitive to this, Mana, could you tell what he was doing?"

'_Mana_…' The name, it was familiar. But how? Naruto (yes, that was his name, coming to him past the fog of unconsciousness) cracked open his eyes, careful not to make any movements that might reveal him to be awake. It was dark—'_why dark? Hadn't it been day earlier?'_—and although he could not see it Naruto could feel the heat of a fire warming his back.

He was fortunate, and happened to be lying facing towards the two girls. Both were tall, seeming more like adults than girls despite the school uniforms they were wearing. The one who spoke had dark green, long hair—very long, even for a girl—bound into a single tail that fell down her back, and looked about through closed eyes. '_Yes, she is Kaede. And the other one is… Mana! From my class! What are they doing here?_'

Mana hesitated before responding. "I… did not feel anything that I recognized. If I hadn't been using my eye and focusing on him, I doubt I would have noticed anything. But… yes, there was something, just barely. I think he is indeed the shrouded presence I mentioned." She was a brunette, and had dark skin that skirted the boundary between bronze and brown. Mana could have passed for one of the natives from Kumogakure, had she been but a touch darker. Not that he had seen them in more than pictures.

Kaede raised a hand to her chin in thought. "So there was something—something you could barely detect, and I simply could not sense at all? Hm… how interesting." A heavy silence occurred, as each of the girls thought over what had happened.

They were not the only ones in thought, as Naruto too wondered what had happened. '_How could they not feel that? If they hadn't been focusing on me, I could see them missing the tree climbing part, but everyone nearby should have been able to feel the chakra from when I destroyed it.'_

'_But… Takamichi hadn't felt anything either, and he was older and probably better than my students. So… the people here can't sense chakra at all!'_ The thought was a bizarre one. After having left town so often for simple chakra exercises, Naruto could do so safely anywhere in this world without being found out?

If that was the case, then it was a good thing shinobi were limited to his world. If no one could sense chakra, it would be almost impossible to tell if a ninja was nearby. It was difficult enough to do without a specialized chakra sensor, but here… Naruto shuddered. It was a disturbing thought.

No, that was wrong. It seemed some people could feel him, but what made Mana different from Kaede, Negi, or Takahata? And just as important, what she felt… was that his chakra? Or was it the powers of the fox?

"My my, it looks like we may not need to wonder much longer, hm? Good evening, Naruto-bōzu."

Naruto lay silently for a moment longer, wondering how, exactly, things had gotten to this point. Negi would kill him—he was supposed to be hiding his powers, not letting the students find out about them! How had they even found him? Naruto, from long ingrained habit, had made certain that there had been no one following him when he snuck out of Mahora. It was disturbing that he hadn't noticed them—for all that he hated that he had them, Naruto did have to admit that his senses were far above a normal human's, and he relied upon them to no small extent.

'_It doesn't matter right now_,' Naruto reminded himself. '_Right now I need to deal with Mana and Kaede._' He pushed himself into a sitting position, legs crossed, and sorely wishing that he knew how to do magic just then. It would have been very, very nice to have that memory-erasing spell Negi had mentioned.

Naruto gave his students a smile—sheepish and embarrassed one. For a change, that was also how he felt at the moment. Of all the times to meet his students, it had to be after knocking himself unconscious. He couldn't even blame the tree this time.

"Hehe. It's evening now?" '_That was stupid. Come on, think! What am I supposed to say now?_' "Good evening, then." '_Probably not that_.'

The quickly fading pain in Naruto's head prompted him to continue. "Thank you for helping me after I hit the tree." Naruto wished he could have just denied that it had happened—how embarrassing, that he had needed someone to help him after his own mistake!—but it would be useless to pretend it hadn't happened after they had taken care of him.

Kaede waved her hand in dismissal as she sat down across from him, leaning back on her hands. It was the most laid-back pose Naruto had ever seen. "Not a problem, not a problem at all, Naruto-bōzu. How could we just stand by and watch our cute new sensei get a concussion, hm?" Kaede chuckled before leaning forwards to peer more closely at him—although it was hard to tell that she was, with her eyes closed like that.

Mana stood against a nearby tree, her arms folded across her chest. Beside her lay a long metal stick, with an odd handle and some sort of trigger. "You are very lucky, sensei. The way you hit that tree should have broken your neck." She shook her head in exasperation. "Although I don't envy you the bruise you'll have come tomorrow—or right now, for that matter."

He could feel the bruise now, in fact, although it wasn't half as bad as Mana thought it would be. The Kyuubi must have begun healing it already—along with whatever other damage he may have suffered from the exploding tree.

Naruto ran his hand through his hair, catching his fingers on a bandage wrapped around his head. He made himself chuckle. "It doesn't hurt all that bad—just enough to let me know that I made a mistake." He looked at the two girls. "Thanks for the help, but what brought the two of you out here, Kaede-chan, Mana-chan? I didn't think that anyone from the city would come so far out onto the mountain." And wasn't that the truth.

"Not quite, Naruto-bōzu. I myself come here often on weekends like this for training." Naruto perked up that the mention of that—these girls trained? So far out of town, and considering that they hadn't immediately jumped down his throat about the destroyed tree, surely that meant that they, too, used magic? Or chi—Takamichi had explained the concept of chi to him when he had first met Negi.

Naruto mentally berated himself for not having noticed earlier—they had even mentioned magic before they had realized he was awake! He would never be as good as he had to be if he couldn't notice important details such as these.

Kaede cracked open an eye to stare at him. It was remarkable, how much her face changed simply by being able to see a single eye—a lazy, laid back appearance became focused and serious. "But I am afraid that wasn't why we were out here today, sensei. The Headmaster takes the safety of his students very seriously—as you are surely aware, having already met the man." Kaede laughed, once more the girl she had seemed to be. "Intense, isn't he? Odd to think of him as the same doddering old man trying to get his granddaughter hitched, hm?"

Naruto nodded. It would have been too much to hope for, to be accepted right from the beginning. The Headmaster had indeed been intense, and had made it clear that he would not accept a threat to his students. Still, Naruto hadn't expected to be followed. This wasn't a ninja village, after all.

No sooner had Kaede finished talking than Mana whirled on her. "Kaede! What do you think you're doing? We're supposed to be clandestine about this—or did the Baka Ranger not understand when the Headmaster told her that?" Mana finished, her tone lilting and mocking as she scowled at her companion.

Kaede once more waved her hand. "Hm? Sorry Mana, did you say something?" Kaede chuckled as a vein in her friend's forehead twitched in time to her anger. "It hardly matters at this point, after all. We had to expose ourselves to make sure he didn't get sick left alone out here, and there was no point in hiding our knowledge of less… mundane… matters at that point."

"But that doesn't mean that we can just tell the target that we're watching him! It's completely unprofessional," Mana ground out, giving Kaede a hard stare. Naruto hid his nod—it made sense, after all, not to reveal one's purpose in that type of mission.

"Is that so? I would hardly think it would be proper to begin a friendship with one's teacher while hiding the fact that you were watching them for wrongdoing," Kaede said, her tone seeming as though she were talking to herself.

But her message reached its intended target, and Mana reluctantly nodded her head. "That… that's true. I wasn't paid to be a false friend. It would leave a foul taste in my mouth."

Naruto had a hard time understanding the trade between the two. Why wasn't it good to strike up a friendship with someone to keep watch over them? It seemed much more professional than revealing one's intentions beforehand, or keeping a watch from a distance (and thus, less effectively). That was what Negi and Takamichi were doing, after all. Naruto was glad that Mana and Kaede were in this world, rather than his own, because he felt they would have been badly out of their depth.

Something they had said stuck in his mind, and it took Naruto a moment to realize what it was. "Wait—friendship?" Wasn't it sort of quick for that? Infiltrating took time and patience, and making well-placed friends wasn't something to do so easily.

Kaede quirked an eyebrow at him. "We've saved you from getting left out in the cold for who knows how long, bandaged up that wound on your head, pulled the splinters from your legs, and stayed here with you for quite some time. That hit to your head was bleeding, you know. We already know one another's names… life-saving is a time-honored method of creating friends, is it not?"

It couldn't be that easy. It _couldn't_. Making friends couldn't happen through anything so simple, couldn't happen so quickly. He would have made friends before, if it was—he had saved others, back in Tanzaku. He had tried to speak to people in Konoha, had done everything he could with no result.

'_Wait… what if it does happen so easily? Of course it does—how else would so many people have so many friends? No… it's me, of course. My fault._'

Yes, that was it. They could tell who he was, what he was—could feel how filthy, how perverted by the fox's touch Naruto was. How could he form friends like that? And the people of Konohagakure… they knew, they all knew what he was. Obviously they couldn't bring themselves to stand by him, knowing how disgusting he was.

But… these girls couldn't feel it. They _couldn't feel him!_ They didn't know how evil he was, couldn't sense the foulness in his body. Mana and Kaede—no, everyone here!—had no way to know what Naruto was, so of course they felt that they could be friends with him.

He should tell them. Naruto knew that he should. It wasn't good for them to be around him, exposed to his taint, without knowing what was happening—but, as he opened his mouth, he couldn't bring himself to say the words, to ruin the possibilities he now saw.

He _needed_ it, with a sudden burning passion, to fill an emptiness Naruto hadn't known he had.

"Friends then," Naruto said, his mouth forming into the warmest smile he knew how to make. It felt odd to speak it, as though it were a foreign word with meanings beyond what he understood.

* * *

><p>Naruto hadn't realized that friendship involved as much talking as it seemed to. There had been quite a lot of it—they had, of course, wanted to know what he was doing, which meant that he needed to describe chakra to them, which wasn't easy at all.<p>

Actually, most of what they had talked about had been about training. Kaede had told him about chi and how it was the power of the self, the body, and the spirit, and about the most basic uses of it. About the techniques for instant movement (so similar to the Shunshin no Jutsu!), and the first use of chi—to empower the body, making it faster, stronger, and tougher.

That was something Naruto really wanted to try out, when he got the chance. He hoped he could do the same thing with chakra.

Mana, apparently, was a wicked hand with shuriken, although Naruto's pride was pleased to note that she didn't know how to throw multiple of the blades with one hand. Apparently, she preferred to use her other weapon. She called it a 'gun' and Naruto had been very impressed when she showed him how it worked. It used explosions to make the bullets move, something Naruto didn't think anyone back in his world had thought to do before.

Unfortunately, guns were apparently very well known here, and they had jumped on his lack of knowledge. A barrage of questions had followed—where was he from? Why had he come here? What sort of technology did his people use if they didn't have guns?

He managed to give half-answers to these questions (and more) enough to satisfy their curiosity. They found out less than Takahata did (even setting aside all the personal information the man learned), but his own lack of knowledge about how he got here was enough to deflect their attention away. Although that had been quite shocked that his people had radio communication (although apparently very short range by this world's standards) without ever having invented the gun. Naruto didn't know why that was so shocking.

Naruto would have tried to learn more about his new friends (that word again!)—if the teachers had magic, which all the ones he had met did, why send students to follow him? What did they do? Mana called following him a job; did they get paid? Why did Kaede have such a bad grade when she didn't seem stupid at all? What did they do for fun?—but the sky grew darker still, and Naruto knew that they couldn't stay out for much longer.

The girls had assured him that they could take care of themselves, but Naruto had insisted that they return to the dorms that night, even if tomorrow was Sunday and thus had no school. He didn't know why he felt so protective; was it because they were his friends, or was being a teacher already that important to him? Naruto didn't know, but he did know that he didn't want them out so late.

He didn't follow them back. It would have been nice, to talk with them more, but they had shown up before he could do what he had come out of the city for.

Naruto scraped fragments of wood away from a spot on the ground, having not left the clearing, and sat upon the grass. He reached into his jacket, into a pocket hidden along the inside, and pulled forth what he could only describe as his most prized possession. It was his heirloom, his inheritance; a gift to survive and grow from the Sandaime Hokage.

It looked to be a simple scroll, the wooden caps simply engraved. But as Naruto pulled it open, the three seals writ unto the paper revealed it to be much more important. He ran his finger along the edge of the wooden ends to the scroll, lightly slicing his finger on the sharp edge worked into the leafy design. The cut was small and healed almost instantly, but not before blood welled up. A smooth movement across the paper, and the seals opened, releasing their contents.

From the first came paper—two letters, written to him. Naruto carefully picked them up, inhaling the scent of them; faded with years, but uncontaminated with other scents, having been sealed away with his birth. His mother's letter, he thought, smelt of spices, warm and sharp, and had been written in a messy hand. The other was more flowing and neatly penned, and smelled liked tree sap and ink. His father's.

Naruto's hands trembled as he held the letters he couldn't read. He felt a burning in his chest, a gratitude towards Negi that he didn't think he could ever express. That he could learn to read, to know the words that his mother and father had left for him… Naruto didn't think he would ever be able to thank Negi enough.

Even so, Naruto feared what he would learn, when he read them and knew his parents better—what would they think of him, with such a monster moving within him? That he felt it, that it wormed into his dreams like rot into a tree?

But… he traced the lines of the words with his finger, following paths he knew so deeply he could have copied the letters from memory. Even so, he needed to know. To know them, to know his parents, even if it was only in letters and words from years past. Naruto couldn't understand why he had been so set against learning to read. Now that the idea was there, that it would actually happen, he couldn't imagine why he had ever objected.

Naruto carefully set the letters to the side, gently setting them on the edge of the scroll so they would not crinkle or get dirty.

The second seal held far more. A large scroll slightly thicker than his wrist, three books, and a smaller scroll were held in it. The bigger scroll was about chakra and ninja techniques—Naruto didn't know how to read it, of course, but the old man had told him about it.

It held nothing secret; chakra exercises anyone could get a hold of, simple techniques an Academy student could learn if they wanted to. It had diagrams he didn't understand without the words, but he had been able to finish learning the Kawarimi no Jutsu from it, after he had left the Academy. As he pulled open the scroll, glancing through it once more, he saw what he now understood to be the tree climbing he had attempted.

The books were each of a different subject. One covered fūinjutsu—something of unique interest to Naruto, subject to a seal as he was. He had tried to practice making seals, once—but it had exploded in his face, leaving him to conclude that practicing making seals was a very, very bad idea without knowing what he was doing.

But he found the other two books to be more interesting, and to Naruto were the most important of the items in the second seal. He ran his hands along the spines of the books, closing his eyes as he remembered a dying man wasting away on a bed, a whispered conversation interrupted by shuddering and bloody coughs. "_The Legend of the Gutsy Ninja_" was the title of the first—the book he was named after. The second was a guide to plants—of flowers and gardening, full of pictures that allowed Naruto to understand the meaning of the book even without being able to read. Naruto pulled the book to his chest, again feeling that Sarutobi cared.

It hurt, to flit back and forth. To wonder one moment if the old man had ever cared at all, and to berate himself the next for doubting him. Naruto wondered if he could set up a garden, here—there was plenty of space in the mountains, to perhaps start his own. He hadn't had a garden since… before he left Konoha. Before he ran away.

The thinner of the two scrolls was the simplest, and the one he understood least. Writing scrawled across it, but Naruto hadn't the slightest idea what the scroll was about. The Hokage had not spoken of it, and there were no pictures on it to give indication of what it meant.

The final seal was the one that Naruto relied upon the most, one that was activated by chakra rather than blood. A small pulse into it poured out dozens of shuriken, of kunai, of weapons Naruto hadn't heard of before and couldn't imagine how to use. It had once held money, as well—but that had disappeared quickly enough. Quicker than it should have, truth be told. Naruto hadn't understood how to spend money properly, back then, and had gone through what he had been given.

Naruto brushed aside a small mound of weapons to pull forth a little book—hardly larger than his hand. The third seal was the only one that he could seal other things in; the other two seals were locked, only able to hold what had originally been sealed into them. Naruto hadn't taken as much advantage of that as he could have, but he had so rarely found anything worth keeping that way.

The book had a simple cover, having no need to be more elaborate. It was a bingo book, and any shinobi would be able to recognize it on sight, even with its lack of identifying designs. Naruto flipped open the cover and thumbed through to the middle.

Most of the faces in the bingo book didn't matter to Naruto. It was an old book, over a dozen years old, and if anyone in the book was still around Naruto doubted they would be someone he would have to worry about. But there had been two faces, two entries in the book that had mattered quite a bit to him.

His father's face looked up at him from the pages. Namikaze Minato looked stern and serious—but Naruto couldn't help but imagine a kindness in the eyes meant only for him. Beside him in the book was Uzumaki Kushina—she had been in the back, but Naruto had torn the page out to place her where she belonged. Unlike his father, she smiled—it looked natural on her face, as though it were her normal expression.

'_What would they think of me? I ran from Konoha, from my entire world—would they be angry? Upset? Proud?'_ Naruto wondered, although he thought he already knew the answer.

Naruto gave the images of his parents a wistful glance before closing the bingo book. As much as he enjoyed looking at them, that wasn't why he had opened the seal. He reached into a pocket to pull out a folder, bent and folded from his attempt to force it to fit into the pocket.

In it were the pictures of the class. Of his class. Naruto took a moment to look over the images of the students again. He still could not read the names—but, as he looked over the words, he thought he could at least recognize which name belonged to which student.

How important would they become to him? Naruto didn't understand everything involved with being a teacher—it was never something he had ever imagined becoming—but wasn't he responsible for them? Such a strange idea, to be responsible for someone else when only a week ago he was only responsible for finding enough food to get through another day.

What did it mean to be their sensei? It meant he would teach them, of course—but was that all? Iruka had done more for him than that—he had shown him what it meant to be a shinobi of Konohagakure, had given him food, had been more than just the man who taught his class.

Naruto didn't know if he could do that. He didn't even know how to begin. But he would have to try.

He set the folder on top of the seal and pushed chakra into his hand. A small puff of smoke later, and the folder disappeared into the scroll. Naruto repeated the process with most of the other items taken from the scroll, leaving behind only a couple handfuls of shuriken and some kunai. Placing stripes of blood over the other seals let him place back the letters and books—save for the book on gardening. Perhaps it was time for him to take that up again.

Naruto picked up the end of the scroll and flicked his hand, causing it to neatly roll up once again. He stood up and slipped the paper back into the hidden pouch in his jacket. He had spent too long out—he hoped Zazie wouldn't get worried. He'd hate to wake her up because he got back late.

* * *

><p>Naruto had always been lucky—although whether this luck was good or bad is a matter of much debate.<p>

Naruto, with his enhanced senses, could notice almost anyone in his own ninja village who could try to sneak up on him—Kaede and Mana hadn't drawn near until moments before he hit his head. Close enough, he would be able to make out the heartbeat of a human being and hear the sound of the air they were breathing, be able to smell to human scent all over them.

Thus, of course, the person watching Naruto was one of the only people in all of Mundus Vetus who Naruto wouldn't detect.

It was hard to hear the beating of a heart that doesn't exist, and the electronics that served in its place were of such high quality that even Naruto could not notice them. It was hard to hear the rustling of movement when the person could go hours without the slightest motion. It was hard to smell the scent of man when there was so little, when the only contact the person had was with someone who wasn't human herself.

As such, Naruto was taken by complete surprise when Chachamaru burst from the trees to strike him in the back of the head. Something shattered, and Naruto felt a painful cold wrap about him like liquid ice.

Naruto's last thought before consciousness fled (again) was that he really needed to get a helmet.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note<strong>:

Thank you for reading, once again!

Earlier, I mentioned that Sunday was a no school day. It is also the only day of the week with no school at a normal Japanese school. The Japanese school week runs from Monday to Saturday.

_**Kawarimi no Jutsu**_: "Body Replacement Technique" or "Substitution Jutsu." The shinobi reaches out with chakra to latch onto a nearby object. They then 'push' themselves along the connection of chakra, replacing themselves with the object. This technique is extraordinarily easy to accomplish for a technique that is actually exceedingly complicated and intricate—most of the work of the technique is naturally taken care of due to the very nature of how chakra works.

Replacing oneself with a living being is much, much more complicated, due to how foreign sources of chakra conflict with one another.

_**Shunshin no Jutsu**_: "Body Flicker Technique" or "Teleportation Jutsu," depending on the translation. The Shunshin could be said to be an altered form of the Kawarimi, but is sufficiently different to merit being its own technique. The shinobi reaches out with their chakra to replace themselves, as with the Kawarimi, but replace themselves with air rather than a solid object.

While requiring much less chakra to use (and can thus be used over longer distances), it also requires more focus and concentration, preventing it from being freely used in combat by most shinobi, and requires chakra control beyond the reach of most genin. For a brief moment between the switch of body and air, there is a vacuum in the area the shinobi once was, causing nearby debris to swirl around the starting and ending locations. With greater chakra control, this telltale sign can be negated, but because it is so rarely used in combat few choose to learn to do so.


	7. Toccata & Fugue

Sadly, I own neither Naruto nor Negima, in any of their variations.

I'm not Bach either, but I'll use his song for the chapter. Toccata and Fugue in D minor.

**NOTICE: **You may wish to re-read the story; not only has it been a year since my last update (I'm so sorry!), but I also went back and re-did parts of it. Not a lot of big changes, but I made it flow better. For instance, the conversation between Naruto and Takahata is much better, as are a few other parts.

There was one major revision, though—the language-learning issue is approached differently, and better sets the stage for the future of the story (and hints at a bit of the history, too). Also, I managed to get the Greek letters to show up for the potion name, finally.

Enjoy!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 7:<strong>

**Toccata & Fugue **

Naruto shrugged uncomfortably in his restraints. It wasn't the first time he'd been caught by someone, but it was certainly the first where he was bound by a layer of ice. It wasn't as bad as it could be, but the ice coating his arms and torso was more than enough to make him shudder from the chill.

His captor noticed his movement. "Are you uncomfortable, Naruto-sensei?" A girl who Naruto thought might be named Chacha… something-or-other asked. Naruto would have called her voice emotionless, but there were undercurrents to the sound, just barely present, that prevented him from doing so. She reached around from her position behind his chair to press her fingers against his forehead.

Naruto tried to pull away from his student's touch, but being frozen to a chair put a limit on how much he could move. His breath caught and a quiver ran down his spine as she touched his head. Her fingers were precisely of room temperature (shouldn't they be warmer?), but Naruto couldn't help but think of them as brands against his skin.

"_Get away from him!"_

"_Don't touch it!"_

_A deep and dark chuckle, like the sound of falling mountains, before tendrils of black and red flowed across Naruto's body, raising blisters and cracking his skin where they touched him._

He shuddered at the foreign touch and the memories it brought, but Chacha-something pulled away soon enough. "Elevated heart rate, quickened and shallow breaths. Temperature higher than the human norm, despite the restraints." She walked in front of him and peered into his eyes. "No pupil dilation." She looked at him, her face unchanged, but Naruto had the impression that she would have been frowning. "Are you ill, Naruto-sensei?"

He wouldn't call himself an expert, but this wasn't exactly how hostage situations typically turned out. Naruto was pretty certain that after being captured, his captor wasn't supposed to look so concerned over his well-being. Although he didn't entirely understand why he thought she looked worried, with her face being so unemotional. "No, I'm fine. The ice was just cold, that's all."

His strangely polite captor didn't look like she believed him, and leaned closer to him again. Naruto flinched away in anticipation of her fingers again—but she didn't touch him. She nodded slowly, her eyes widening ever so slightly. "I see. You dislike physical contact."

"I think anyone would have a problem with touching from the person who attacked them from behind," Naruto shot back. Not that he really had a problem with ambush tactics, but it was the principle of the matter.

His jailer was dressed in an odd dress, entirely black and white with frills covering many of the edges. It was… pretty, he supposed, even if it wasn't something Naruto had ever seen before. Light green hair fell down her shoulders, but it was her ears that truly caught Naruto's attention, unusual as they were. They might not have been ears at all—they were large, angular, and smooth, with a metallic appearance, nearly a foot long. Naruto had thought that they were just something that people in this world had, but if she had ambushed him they might not have been normal.

The strangely-dressed girl folded her hands together and bowed. "Please forgive me, Naruto-sensei, but my mistress wished to speak to you, and felt that it would be appropriate to be cautious." She straightened and pulled the broken remains of a glass vial from a pocket in her clothing, shards of ice clinging to the pieces of glass. "She was the one who created the potion that currently binds you."

She bowed again, a smooth and obviously well-practiced motion. "Please, forgive me again, for I have not introduced myself properly, classroom aside. I am Karakuri Chachamaru, prime model of the Karakuri gynoid line. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Please take care of me."

Naruto had no idea what "prime model" and "gynoid" meant, but wasn't it rather out of place for the captor to ask the captive to take care of them? It was still nice of her, if more than a little strange.

He thought he should be angrier at her, but it was hard to keep hold of his anger when Chachamaru was being so polite and apologetic. She really didn't seem to be a bad sort at all, despite have hit him in the head. But who was this mistress she spoke of?

"You couldn't have just asked me to come here?"

'Here' was one of the oddest rooms Naruto had ever been in. Not because of the shape or materials—it was a perfectly ordinary, although well-furnished, wooden house—but because of what covered nearly every flat surface in the building. Toys—dozens of dolls, shaped like people and creatures Naruto had never seen before, each of them seeming to peer at him with their fake eyes. Stuffed animals, with beady eyes of glass or buttons, stared down towards him, and Naruto had the uncomfortable feeling that if he moved, the toys would turn their heads to follow him. They sat on the chairs, on the tables, and peered at him from shelves lining the walls.

It was distinctly disturbing.

Chachamaru drew his attention back to her as she shook her head. "I'm afraid that Mistress would view such a request as a sign of weakness. My apologies, Naruto-sensei, for attacking you."

'_Why is it so hard to be angry at this girl? Stop apologizing so I can be mad at you!_'

"Just forget it!" Naruto found himself saying, one of his brighter smiles sliding onto his face. "What already happened, already happened, and we can't do anything about that."

Naruto's grins must have started working properly again, because Chachamaru looked (almost) relieved when he finished talking—even if he hadn't meant to say it. He tried to say something hurtful, but the words just didn't come out. It was just too hard to stay mad at her.

Ah, well. It wasn't like this was a completely strange idea, anyways—even under the Sandaime Hokage, shinobi that needed to give sensitive reports were occasionally brought to the Torture and Interrogation Unit. They weren't tortured, obviously, but all interrogations—friendly and hostile—took place there unless they fell under police jurisdiction. It was the information center of Konohagakure, and no-one was permitted to know its actual location outside of Anbu, so most people brought there were unconscious or blindfolded.

He himself had been taken in once, to document his innocence after Kumo tried to kidnap a Hyūga, even if he had been so young he hardly remembered it. So it wasn't as though a so-far-harmless confinement like this was necessarily a bad thing. Just annoying and decidedly inconveniencing. And cold. Very cold.

Although he'd be damned if he didn't get a good explanation for why his student did this.

"Are you looking forwards to the field trip, Naruto-sensei?"

Naruto gave Chachamaru a disbelieving glance. Was she seriously trying to strike up a conversation about school while he was trapped in an icicle?

Yes. Yes she was—there was nothing in her face, even as motionless as it was, to suggest that she was trying to be funny. Naruto thought it was a wildly inappropriate conversation topic, all things considered.

But he had nothing else to do. "Yeah," Naruto admitted, "I am. I've never been on one before." Not that the Academy hadn't offered them, but it was amazing how the timing for his detentions seemed to line up.

Wait. He shouldn't be sounding like the kid in this situation! He needed to sound like a teacher. "I think it will be a great time for the students to bond together..." He trailed off, unable to complete the sentence as he listened to what he just said.

Bond. It was amazing, how much impact the word had, now that he had _friends_. It was an intoxicating thought, something he had never considered to be a possibility outside of childish dreams. But here in this world, during the field trip—surely, that would be the best chance. Even something like him could make friends here. Naruto shivered again, but the ice surrounding him had nothing to do with it.

Forget sounding like a teacher. The bonding was for him too. The question was, how?

Chachamaru nodded her head, still looking at him. Naruto wondered how she could stare at him for so long without blinking. "The Mahora Love Research Association agrees with your assessment. Statistically speaking, both friendly and romantic bonds are made more easily during field trips and similar excursions. As such, it is inordinately likely that you will form ties of companionship despite your limited time teaching here, taking into account the days leading up to the trip."

Naruto looked blankly at his student, trying to figure out what she said.

The silence that followed was distinctly uncomfortable.

Chachamaru cast her gaze around the room, before resting her eyes on something that lay behind him. "Would you like some tea, Naruto-sensei?"

Naruto was starting to get the impression that Chachamaru didn't know what she was supposed to do now that she had captured him. Their conversation (such as it was) felt awkward, even to him, and Naruto had to admit that he wasn't as very good at talking with people.

"I don't think I could drink tea," Naruto said, wriggling under the ice. It felt somehow looser than it had before, and he could feel trickles of liquid falling down his back. "I can't hold the cup with my arms frozen like this."

'_Is the ice starting to melt? I know my body is hotter than a normal person's, but could I be warm enough to work my way out of this?'_ While Chachamaru didn't seem that bad at all—certainly not what he had been afraid of once he woke up—Naruto couldn't forget that he was still her prisoner. Sure, it may not be as bad as he had assumed, but that didn't mean he was going to just sit there.

Naruto experimentally flexed his arms. There was a little bit of room—enough to move an inch or two—but the ice felt like it was still thick enough that he might not be able to break it. He pressed closer to the ice and tried not to wince from the chill along his skin, hoping that his body would melt the ice faster.

"That isn't a problem," his captor said, her voice still that oddly pleasant monotone as she turned to walk to the kitchen. "Mistress is often ill, so I am accustomed to feeding someone who cannot feed themselves."

Chachamaru walked into the small kitchen next to the room he was in, her shoulders just barely within his peripheral vision. Was it insulting to be compared to a sick person? Naruto didn't know, but it certainly wasn't a comfortable comparison.

A cheerful voice pulled Naruto's attention away from Chachamaru.

"I hope you die!"

Naruto whipped his head around to stare to his left. "What the hell? Who said that?" he asked. His gaze darted about the room, trying to find the source of the sound. But there was no one else in the room, only row upon row of eerily staring dolls.

"Wow! You startle easy, don'tcha?" the voice giggled, "You're pretty fun. I wish I could move so I could kill you." She laughed again, sounding like a child that managed to get her hands on something she shouldn't have.

Naruto's brow furrowed as he tried to ignore how disturbing the voice sounded. It was definitely coming from over there, but he didn't see anyone that could—

No.

A little doll sat on a shelf, looking straight at him with an open-mouthed smile. "Hi!"

There is a large variety of possible responses to being spoken to by a psychotic, green-haired doll holding a knife. Several options ran through Naruto's head at that moment, before he chose the most suitable for the occasion.

That is to say, he screamed like a little girl.

"What the hell is that?!"

Chachamaru walked calmly back into the room holding a tray with the tea and cups on it, ignoring Naruto. "Chachazero, I was under the impression that you were not to speak when we had guests, unless Mistress gave you permission."

The little doll chuckled, flopping her head to the side to look at Chachamaru. "I sure am! But he's not a guest, he's a prisoner! That's two entirely different things, li'l sis."

"What the fuck…I… why is it talking?!" Naruto cried out, pushing the chair away from the wall with his feet to get away from the doll.

"I'm made out of your nightmares."

Chachamaru shook her head. "Please ignore her, Naruto-sensei. She is my…" She paused, trying to find a word that would describe their relationship. "I suppose you could call her my predecessor, or perhaps my older sister. Neither is entirely correct, but they work well enough."

Chachazero giggled. "Come on, of course I'm your older sister! By a couple hundred years, sure, but it's the thought that counts."

The taller of the two ignored the shorter, instead setting the tea down on a nearby table to pour the liquid into small cups. "Chachazero is a magical construct my mistress created long ago. Again, please, ignore her—she isn't able to move without Mistress's magic, so is not a threat to anyone."

Naruto stared wide-eyed at the small figure. Her doll-eyes glistened in the light as she stared at him without blinking. He swallowed, wondering if he really wanted to see the person that would make something like that.

It—_she_—wouldn't stop giving him that psychotic smile. Naruto glanced away from the doll, focusing on Chachamaru as she held up a cup of tea for him to drink from. But that ended up being a bad idea, too.

Chachazero looked like something out of one of the horror movies he used to sneak into the theatre to watch, the sort that didn't let him go to sleep that night. In moments, Naruto found himself staring back at her again. Not being certain that she was still in the same spot was more disturbing than looking at her and her creepy eyes.

"Hah! You're funny. Scared of a doll that can't even move! I can't wait until you meet Mistress," she said, chuckling.

Naruto glared at the stupid doll of the stupid shelf. He wasn't _scared_. She was just creepy, that's all. Anyone would think the same, after having to listen to her talk.

He twisted in his seat, managing to hook a foot under one of the chunks of ice that had fallen around the chair. He couldn't stand her looking at him like that. Naruto snapped his foot up, sending the ice across the room to smack the doll in her never-ending grin with a wooden thunk. The doll teetered in place for a moment, before falling off the shelf onto the floor.

"Aaaah! Help, I've fallen and I can't get up!"

"Shut up, you psycho!" Naruto yelled at the doll, trying to get his foot under another piece. He snarled at her—she wasn't half so highbrow or scary (not that he was scared) when she was lying face down on the ground.

He had just managed to get another bit of ice when Chachamaru poked it out of his foot with a broom. "Please refrain from further violence in this house, or I will have to restrain you further."

"No need, Chachamaru. Even if he were unbound, I doubt he'd be any sort of threat to _me_," someone said from behind him as they pulled open the door to enter the house.

Naruto turned as much as the ice would allow him, but he could only catch a glimpse of blonde hair and black fabrics. "The Headmaster wished to speak with me again." The new girl said, laughing. Her voice was familiar, but Naruto couldn't tell where from. "I'll have to thank you for catching him when you did and sparing me another of his tedious conversations."

Her feet stepped lightly on the floor as she moved close to him, so softly even Naruto could barely hear them. She sighed as she stepped in front of him to look him in the eyes. "After setting all those magic traps, Chachamaru ends up catching you while she was feeding her little animals. You're a rather troublesome one, aren't you, sensei?"

"Evangeline?" Naruto asked, although it wasn't much of a guess. As short as she was, and with wavy blonde hair dropping past her waist, she wasn't exactly difficult to remember. Naruto had seen more blond people in this world in a week than he had in his entire life back home.

Evangeline A. K. McDowell smirked at him. "So you've heard of me? Good, that will make this much easier." Of course he heard of her, she introduced herself in class. She made a beckoning motion, and in a moment Chachamaru returned with an elaborately decorated leather chair. Evangeline splayed herself across it, her legs sticking out over the arms of the seat—although not very far. She was much too short to do the pose justice.

"Mistress!"

The girl started. "Chachazero? What the hell are you doing on the floor?" Evangeline asked, leaning over the edge of the seat to pick up the doll. A shard of ice was imbedded in the wood above her right eye, but Chachazero's smile—no, her smirk—was still decidedly in place. Evangeline righted the doll on her lap and tugged out the offending shard.

"I was sitting with the mindless dolls, but your sensei got his legs free. I'm afraid I took a nasty fall because he kicked the ice at meeeee!" Chachazero sing-songed. Her voice sounded pretty (for an evil puppet), but even Naruto could tell that her rhymes were awful. She didn't seem like she cared in the least, though.

She paused, her smile changing from 'murderous psycho' to 'happy psycho', which wasn't an improvement. "Can we keep him? I bet if I had blood I would have died by now!" she said in a voice more appropriate for talking about a pet than unfortunately-not-lethal wounds. "I like him!"

Naruto gave Chachazero an askance glance, trying not to freak out. There was something seriously wrong with that puppet. Something about her made him want to scream—or at least turn her so that she wasn't looking at him. But it was easier to deal with her, now that he had seen her lying face-down on the floor.

His eyes went up from the doll to her master. Evangeline wore a dress, entirely in black, with intricate designs worked in with lace and velvet over the surface of it. It ended just above her knees, small tassels hanging every few inches, each tipped in small sparkling gems. Her arms and shoulders were bare, the dress held up only by a strings wrapped around a small, tasteful collar on her neck.

Naruto wasn't an expert when it came to clothing, but in Tanzaku one could see clothes from across half the world, and he knew what sorts of people wore which sorts of garments. The style was different from what his world would have, but Naruto could tell that what Evangeline wore was expensive. She could probably sell it and live comfortably for a month.

She was obviously rich—but why live in this small cabin?

Evangeline smiled as she petted the dolls green hair. It looked rather like Chachamaru's, come to think of it. It made her look the part of Chachamaru's sister, although Chachazero certainly didn't look like the older of the two.

"Made that much of an impact on you, did he?"

"Yep! I wanna kill him!"

Evangeline laughed again, high and soft. She sounded almost delighted as she looked at Naruto. "She likes you! It's been a long time since Chachazero took a shine to anyone."

Naruto didn't want to respond to that. He did _not_ want to think about that puppet liking him. "You know, you could have just asked to meet me. I'm pretty certain teachers are required to be available for their students."

She sniffed and gave a sharp shake of her head. At some point she had taken a cup of tea, which she took a delicate sip of before gracing him with a response. "This is hardly related to school, Uzumaki. Believe me, there is _nothing_ that I would ever need a teacher's help for." Evangeline smirked at him—again. It seemed to be her natural expression. "And even if there were something, however small it may be, do you really think that I would ask for help from someone who can't even read?"

Naruto bit back a growl. It had been a long time since anyone had given him an insult that stung like that. But more importantly, how did she know about that? Naruto was certain that Negi hadn't mentioned it to anyone, and the two of them had made the class plans so that it wouldn't be noticeable. The fact that she looked younger than he thought he was just made it worse.

"Then what did you want to know? If you don't want the answers to next week's test, I don't have much for you." Which was true—he knew nothing about this 'Mundus Vetus', and if Evangeline wanted to know about his own world… well, Naruto didn't exactly have all of the secrets of home wrapped up and tied with a bow, either.

She snorted. "Answers to—you're a cheeky little brat, aren't you?" she said, ignoring that she might actually be shorter than he was. "Hardly anything so quaint. I want to know what you're hiding."

"Could you be more specific? I'm afraid I might have forgotten to tell the class about my sixth birthday, if that's what you're looking for."

Evangeline didn't dignify his comment with a response. In her situation, Naruto wouldn't have either. "How did you do it? You slipped right through the wards, and each time I tried to focus them you managed to slip away, only to pop up somewhere else. I've watched you since Takamichi found you, and I've seen you train."

"I've never seen anything like it before. One moment I feel nothing, then I can feel quivers of youki running through your body. And there's something… else. Something that's almost demon energy, but not quite—when I try to look closer it slips away as though it were fog."

Evangelion hopped out of the chair to loom over him as effectively as someone so small could—which was, Naruto granted, more than he would have expected her to. "I want to know what you are, Naruto-_sensei_."

'What', not 'who'. Naruto felt the stirrings of mocking laughter, but didn't let it out. Some things just weren't appropriate. Evangeline had no idea how apt her choice of words was.

'_So she wants to know more about chakra? I can't think of what else she might mean, because I certainly don't know anything about any wards, and I certainly didn't think anyone was trying to find me before Takahata managed to do so_.'

So he explained. It was nothing he hadn't told Takahata already. How chakra worked, mixing the power of the body and of the mind, and the types of training one needed to do to make each more powerful. He spoke of the Rikudo Sennin, the Sage of Six Paths, who shaped the world and created the first jutsu. He told her about the different sorts of things one could do with chakra—from elemental techniques to summoning to illusions. He told her about the difference between mere martial arts and taijutsu techniques, and about the Kekkei Genkai, the bloodline traits, that was so often the deciding factor in village politics.

Answers about his power in turn led to more questions, and he ended up speaking again of how he came to this world, vague suggestions of politics—few enough facts that it looked like he was keeping something hidden, but enough of them for her to come to her own conclusions. Much as he had told Negi—when he learned the conclusions Takahata had come to with his pieces of the truth, Naruto had decided that he would run his own future explanations along the same lines. Consistency was the key in keeping any fiction alive.

Of course, he didn't say everything. He _couldn't_. How he had lived in Tanzaku—the real reasons why he had fled there—and how he had been treated in Konoha… these were matters that Naruto would never tell anyone, not without having it forced out of him. Not here, not to his students (to anyone, in this world or any other). And the very idea of discussing the demon was laughable at best.

"Fascinating," Evangeline mused as he finished talking. "Absolutely fascinating."

That seemed to be a common reaction, Naruto thought as he slumped in his cold prison. He looked as though he were exhausted (which he was—the last few days had been entirely exhausting, with way too much talking), but the motion served to press him further against the slowly melting ice. Naruto thought he could almost feel his temperature rising from the contact—for all that the fox's viciousness, it wouldn't hesitate to take action to keep him (and thus, it) alive and free.

"You have an absolutely fascinating ability," she ground out in frustration, "to say things that I already know!"

'_Wait, what_?'

His short student got to her feet and threw the nearest object at his head. "I'll say it again—_what are you hiding_?" Evangeline repeated, stepping over a giggling Chachazero (the aforementioned nearest object) to glare at him, only inches away from his face.

"You are hiding something. I'll admit, I haven't the faintest idea how—but believe me, I am very, very interested in how you managed to trick the Οἴνος Τοû Ἀλήθειας."

"Did you think I wouldn't drag answers out of that idiot Headmaster? He may think he's old, but he still makes the same mistakes all you young people do. Namely, that Konoemon still thinks he can afford to trust people. A child's error."

Young? The _Headmaster_? Naruto opened his mouth to protest—but the look in her eyes forced him to quiet.

He believed her. The idea was ridiculous, but he could see _centuries_ reflected in her eyes as easily as he saw the moonlight reflected in the same.

"H-how? Who _are_ you?"

Evangeline continued as though he hadn't spoken, "No one has ever managed to resist the potion before, but I could tell you were keeping something secret as soon as the old fool finished telling me about you." Naruto could hear the mocking insult in calling the Headmaster old—the sarcastic bite she added to the word that he couldn't imagine anyone younger than she would be able to add to her voice. "Spend enough centuries in lies, and they become as transparent as glass."

"Why were your 'Anbu' chasing you? How did you survive breaking your neck in the forest today? Where is that demonic power coming from? I can tell there are a dozen upon a dozen other secrets you're keeping—tell me! What are they?" Evangeline demanded. Each question was louder than the next, each punctuated by a sharp, suffocating increase in killing intent. By her final demand, Naruto was pressed as far away from her as the ice would permit—not far away enough by half.

But Naruto lived each day with one that possessed a pure, unreasoning thirst to slaughter. Even as great as the pressure Evangeline forced upon him was, it was nothing in comparison to the demonic hate that oozed, a putrid miasma, from the fox.

He said nothing.

Evangeline scowled at him as she pulled away, the crushing atmosphere easing. "Hmph. I shouldn't have expected it to be so easy, considering the circumstances," she said as she stepped back to look him up and down. "But I think you might have preferred it if you just told me. Chachamaru?"

"Here, mistress," the strange girl said, reaching into a pocket to pull out a small glass tube and hand it to his other student.

Evangeline pulled the stopper from the tube and downed the clear liquid inside. "I didn't want to use this—it takes forever to brew—but answers are a bit more important, now aren't they? Let's see what sort of threat you pose…"

She reached out, ignoring his attempts to pull away, to brush her fingertips against his forehead. "Don't fight this. It will only hurt if you do." There was a sensation—probing, prying, searching—against the edges of his mind, edges that he had never imagined existing before their boundaries were touched. But Naruto could feel the presence of her mind touching his own. There was a coiling, a breathless pause—

And just like that, Evangeline slipped into his mind.

Naruto didn't feel the pain at first—he was the medium through which it was channeled, the slightest opening eagerly pounced upon—but he could hear Evangeline cry out, feel the heat of burnt fingertips, and the shadow of scarlet wisps lancing out into her mind.

Had Evangeline been a lesser being, she would have pulled away. But the Maga Nosferatu had survived every challenge the world had thrust upon her; the red rush of pain and resistance she felt only served to focus her will and determination, and she reached up to clutch at Naruto's head with both hands.

Laughter, impossibly deep and impossibly vile, resounded through their minds—the groaning deaths of mountains, the weeping chorus of fading stars.

Tendrils of thought, red and black and full of screaming hatred forced their way through Naruto's mind and into Evangeline's. Memories fled from their touch in reflexive fear of contamination, but not all could escape—wretched recollections repainted under the eye of the demon, made warped and haunting and foul from its grasp. But this did nothing to slow the prying, as the Kyuubi no Youko forced itself into Evangeline's mind.

Though Naruto could not see into her, he could feel. He could feel the twisting threads of hate dive into the forefront of her mind, only to try to burn into the shadowy corners a moment later, moving with no other purpose than to cause pain. He watched helpless for a dozen eternities as it forced its way through him into his student—but no, it was only seconds, for he could dimly make out the tatters of moments wrapped around the jagged, miniscule fragment of the demon that had escaped its confinement.

But Evangeline was strong—so much stronger than anything Naruto had imagined a person could be—and fought them, shattering the spiteful shadows and driving them out, untangling herself from his mind, so much as she was able. The hateful piece of the Kyuubi, shadows dispersed and with nothing to hide its horrible glory, struck out against her, tearing at the most basic structure of her mind, and for a horrible moment he imagined that it had destroyed her.

Echoes reverberated throughout the minds of the two, resounding atop one another to form a chorus of darkness. Shadows—not the hideous things the monster possessed, but pure reflections of the night—rushed from the seeming ruin of Evangeline's psyche. The demon fragment was wreathed in blackness for a moment, and there was a twisting, a rending, before it was flung back into Naruto's mind, reduced to naught but ashes.

The onslaught repelled, Naruto could feel Evangeline turn onto her own mind. Pillars rose up, collected from rubble and pieced together with nary a seam, standing upon a fundamental, unblemished mandate. "Survive". He could but watch in amazement as she constructed again her mind, building it along paths and structures that had endured for centuries.

But she was not content to merely rebuild—recognizing, perhaps, in her combat with the demon seed, that greater measures were need. She prowled through her mind as she recreated it, hunting down and crushing every remaining mote of crimson that had dared to try to taint her mind. In the destruction, finding the corrupted memories was easy, and Evangeline quarantined these behind walls of ice.

The fortress of Evangeline's mind was forged anew from the chaotic ruin. And none too soon, for ashes coalesced into demonic form once more, and blades of crimson coursed through Naruto. But this time, the Kyuubi had no hold over her, and nothing to bind her to its prison.

Still the beast laughed, even as the girl-who-was-more-than-a-girl tore herself away and out of Naruto's thoughts.

The first thing he noticed as their minds separated is that they were screaming.

Naruto couldn't see, at first—shuddering pain still coursed through his body, burning and piercing remnants of the Kyuubi's assault. Touch was sensitive, though, in counterpoint to the pain. Under his convulsions the ice cracked, and he felt more than heard the impact of a small body against the floor.

A hand as hard as steel smashed through the ice and into his chest, and Naruto found himself launched across the room. Chachamaru's blow and the impact against the wall shattered the remaining ice around his body, dropping the boy to the floor. He lay there for long moments, grasping at the floor and chunks of ice for something solid, something he could affect more than the doings of his mind.

"Mistress! Mistress, are you alright?" Chachamaru asked with almost desperate urgency. It was the most emotion he had heard from her.

What happened to Evangeline? He had never… he… no one had been there before! Was she alright? Naruto forced himself up onto his hands and knees, even as tremors ran down his arms, pain and leaden weight as though he had been exercising for hours. "Ev-Evangeline? Are you… hck!"

He had to stop as a deep, almost retching cough forced its way through his throat. A small spray of blood fell to the ground, accompanied by his rough hacking. Naruto hung his head, fighting the need to collapse back to the ground. Crimson splashed over shards of ice, the blood marred by specks of black—whether it was ash from the burning sensation (did it truly burn him?) or simple taint from the Kyuubi's activity, he didn't know.

With a groan Naruto pushed, managing to maneuver himself into a sitting position so he could see his students.

Chachamaru knelt on the far side of Evangeline, her eyes focused on her mistress—but even from his distance Naruto could make out the worry in her face, despite the near-emotionless of her features. The cause for her concern was obvious, for the smaller girl lay unmoving on the ground, her head now supported by Chachamaru's hand.

The effort felt that of a titan's, but Naruto staggered to his feet despite the pain. His short moments of rest had been enough for the fox to beginning patching his body back together, and he was able to stumble back over to the students. "Is she… alright?"

Chachamaru's head shot up to glare at him. "You tell me! What did you do to her?" she demanded. Naruto had the distinct impression that she would have leaped to attack him if she weren't holding onto her mistress.

"I-I didn't! I wouldn't do that to—hck!" Naruto fell again, only narrowly avoiding landing upon the smaller blonde. He clutched at his chest and throat at the burning, tearing sensation—but less blood coming out, and more black. That was good—the fox was getting it out of his system. Wouldn't do it any good if he died, after all.

He wasn't looking up, so didn't see his student's eyes widen as far as they were programmed to go. "Sensei!"

Her arm—but a shade softer than solid steel—reached out to grasp his shoulder, pulling him over so she could look at his face. She gasped at the dark fluid covering his lips, exclaiming, "Your… what happened? What is… what is this?!"

"It is protogenoi. A lord of the ninth layer," a soft voice replied.

"Mistress!" "Evangeline!"

The blond girl chuckled. The motion made her wince, bringing a hand up to her mouth. Blood—thankfully not flecked with black—stained her mouth, and fell onto her hand. Naruto stared at them with an ill feeling. He had not noticed the smell of burnt flesh, but he couldn't imagine how. So close to her, the scent was overwhelming. Her hands were but claws of meat and bone.

He felt like he would be sick. Naruto stumbled back from her, stammering to find something to say, but unable to find words that would convey… what? That he was sorry? That she shouldn't have gone into his head? That he hadn't meant for that to happen? He didn't know.

"Haha. Out of words, sensei?" the girl said with a small laugh—this time, without the reflexive recoiling of pain. She saw his gaze drawn to her hands. Evangeline looked down, slightly taken aback by their appearance, but only shrugged. "I've lived seven hundred years. Worse has happened, so don't worry your pretty head about it. They'll heal."

They'll heal? That's all she had to say, after that… that… torture? Naruto knew what it felt like to have the demon rummaging about in his head—but it was under no obligation to heal what it had done to Evangeline. How could she be so calm about it?

Chachamaru started fussing over her mistress as she helped the slip of a girl return to a sitting position. "Mistress, what happened to you? How did… what was that? I've never seen you like—like this," she said, waving her hand at the battered state of her charge.

Evangeline batted the hand away. "Bah! I'll be fine. Believe me, it could have been much worse. Be glad you didn't see me after Dagon was driven back into the Trench." She paused. "Well, that was three hundred years ago. You wouldn't even have even existed then."

"Mistress…"

She rolled her eyes at her servant's insistent fussing, but let the gynoid attend to her. "But I can't blame you for not recognizing that unique," here Evangeline paused, letting the last syllable hang on her tongue as she tried to find a suitable word, "presence."

"But what happened? What did he do to you?" Chachamaru asked. She sent another glare Naruto's direction, but there was little heat in it.

A corner of Evangeline's mouth lifted. "And to himself, right?" she said, giving the boy a quick look-over. "Nothing. _He_ didn't do anything. _It_, on the other hand… Tell me, sensei, what is its name?"

Naruto could only stare at the girl. How did she… from what she was saying, it sounded like she recognized what the monster was. But none of the Bijuu had ever left his world (that absence would have surely been noticed). And Evangeline had certainly never visited his own—did that mean there were more of them somewhere?

The very thought brought a foul taste to his mouth.

But she wanted a name, and so he would give it to her. But to say it aloud… Naruto had never done so. He had only learned about it when the Hokage had told him, and he had certainly never shared the secret with another.

Naruto got closer to her, leaning in to whisper it into her ear, careful not to get so close that he touched her. He cupped his hands around her ear so that the sound would travel no further than to her. "The Kyuubi no Youko," he murmured.

The name defiled the air, and he half-expected the sound to leave a dirty sensation on his flesh. The name echoed—even though it shouldn't have—and he could feel the sound's presence weighting the air, grasping at them in anger before fading. No sooner had the word left his mouth than Naruto wished that he had not said it—that he had kept that, at least, a secret.

Evangeline only nodded and leaned back into Chachamaru, a pensive look on her face. She was silent until the green-haired girl asked, "Mistress, is he… dangerous?" Chachamaru didn't sound very certain of the question, although Naruto still could only hear hints of what might have been emotion.

"Everyone's dangerous, Chachamaru. Some more so than others." Evangeline turned to give Naruto a sly grin. "But you, sensei? You're no more dangerous than a puppy."

The comment took a moment to get through to Naruto (who had rather been expecting Evangeline to try to kick him out of the city). "E-Excuse me?" A puppy? "You aren't serious, are you? I felt what it did to you! You can't… you can't just…"

She could not simply dismiss that like it was nothing! The stark odor of burnt skin gave a plain reminder to what happened. Even a normal person could clearly smell that!

Evangeline shook her head and laughed. "I can't believe you don't get it."

Using Chachamaru's shoulder, the girl pulled herself to her feet. "You've caged it, haven't you?" Evangeline smirked at his shocked expression. He was really starting to get annoyed by that. "Oh, don't look so surprised, bōya. I got a pretty good measure of it during that little tête-à-tête—enough so that I know if it _wasn't_ bound, everyone here would be dead."

Naruto gaped at her statement. "That's—that's over-simplifying things! It wasn't me that put it there! You can't—you can't seriously be betting your life on 'he's got it caged', can you?"

Evangeline sniffed and flung a lock of hair over her shoulder. "Of course not. You're ashamed of it—that's why you hid it. Not that anyone could blame you," she said, a strange look in her eye that Naruto couldn't identify, "but the question is, why?"

"The obvious answer, and probably the right one, is that you didn't want it—a burden you didn't ask for. So, why do you have it in the first place?" Evangeline continued.

"Shut up."

She ignored him. "You were running from someone when you came to this world—the ones that forced it into you? Or simply someone who tried to use its power? It hardly matters—what does matter is that you didn't want to help them. Which in turn leads us to the main point here—why you are harmless."

"I said _shut up_."

"You're ashamed of it. You ran from people who wanted to use your power. You haven't killed anyone in the city. I could give a half-dozen other reasons, but they all lead to the same answer—you can't stand what is in you. And so you won't use it, because you—"

"_SHUT UP_!" Naruto screamed, launching himself at Evangeline. Why couldn't she be quiet? Why couldn't she stop her stupid, knowing smirk? Why couldn't she stop _looking_ at him like that?

Driven by his anger, Naruto snapped out with his fist, jabbing into Evangeline's face. For a single, satisfying moment he felt the impact of flesh on flesh.

But as the girl fell backwards, he felt a hand grasp his arm, another grab his shirt. He had only enough time to realize that shouldn't have happened before he was on the ground, arm pulled too far across his back.

Naruto bit back a scream of pain from the dislocated joint as Evangeline sat on his back. "You shouldn't have done that—although I must admit, you're rather fast for a brat."

"But…" With a pop and a scream, Naruto's arm was pushed back into its place and the girl rose off of him. "I think I'll let you go—extenuating circumstances and all that, right? Besides, since when does a level 99 boss seriously fight someone at level 1?"

What the hell did that even mean? Naruto had no idea, but he pulled himself up to a sitting position anyways, rubbing his aching arm. Maybe it would make sense if he asked someone else.

Evangeline nudged him with her foot. "Go on, get. Out of my house."

Naruto pushed her foot away and stood. "That's it? Just 'go'? No more demands for explanations or… anything?" There was something missing. Something he wasn't seeing here—she was letting him leave too soon. Too easily. Why?

"Let's dissect him!" Why couldn't the little monster have just stayed silent?

"Chachazero? Be quiet. Chachamaru? Escort the bōya out."

The strange girl nodded. "Yes Mistress. Please come this way, Naruto-sensei."

Naruto opened his mouth to object on principle—he was her teacher (fact that she was far beyond him aside) and she couldn't dismiss him like that!—but his common sense reared its head for once.

'_This is what you wanted, remember_?' it said. His common sense had a point—hadn't he been trying to leave from the beginning? But now that she ordered him to, he felt like digging his heels in and staying.

He shook his head. He was being stupid. "Alright. Where are we, Chachamaru?"

Evangeline sighed when Naruto finally walked out the door. She had worried for a moment that he was actually going to stay.

Moving with slow and deliberate movements, she plucked Chachazero from the floor and walked to the cushy chair in the living room.

She collapsed into it with a soft cry of pain—appearances or no, it wasn't possible to brush up against a true god and walk away unscathed. "Damn the Thousand Master. Without magic, this body really is worthless."

But her regeneration remained, even if it was less than it once was—she could feel her hands slowly starting to heal. But it would take some few days.

She would use the time to think. Evangeline had seen more in the boy's mind that he thought she did—but only enough to know that she needed more answers than he had.

And she knew where to get them.

* * *

><p>The sun had been down for quite a while by the time Naruto got back to the dorms. Not that it had bothered him—he could see quite fine in the dark. Still, he would have preferred it if he could have gotten back to his room before it got so late—he might attract attention, and he could only imagine much trouble he would get into if the students tried to follow him when he went to train.<p>

He padded quietly through the halls, trying to avoid waking the students there—although Naruto needn't have bothered. While at least a good half of the students seemed to be asleep, he could hear that the other half decidedly wasn't.

Naruto considered tell them to get to bed, but decided it wasn't worth it. After all, tomorrow was Sunday. They had earned the right to stay up late and sleep in even later by surviving the past week of school.

He slipped into his room, opening the door slowly so as not to create much noise. Naruto hadn't heard anything from inside, so he hoped that Zazie was asleep—but she was always so quiet Naruto wasn't able to tell if she was asleep, awake, or even in the room at all.

He gave the room a quick glance. The lights were off (which wasn't a surprise—over the past few days Naruto had noticed that she liked the dim light), and he could make out a form under the covers on the top bunk of their bed.

Naruto sighed in relief as he slid the door shut. It wasn't that he disliked his roommate, but she could be uncomfortable to be around. The way she never said anything, and her expressionless face… he always felt like Zazie was holding a secret over him, that she knew something he didn't. It made things… awkward.

Naruto chastised himself for the thought as he approached double bed. _'Thinking about it that way makes her sound awful. She isn't, really. She's just… quiet._' That she was. Aside from when she was required to talk in class, Naruto hadn't heard her make so much as a peep.

He yawned when he reached the bed. Hot air whiffed against his face. Naruto snapped his eyes open to see Zazie's face, hanging upside down, less than an inch away from his own.

Naruto cried out as he fell back, landing on his ass. "What the hell, Zazie?" he demanded, glaring at the girl. She looked… exactly the same as she always looked, actually. Next to Zazie's face, Chachamaru positively emoted everything she felt.

"…" Hanging upside down off the edge of her bed didn't seem to disturb Zazie at all, nor interrupt the stare she sent his way. She was always staring at him, it seemed.

"…" Her stare seemed different this time, though. Harder, almost a glare—but not quite. Did Zazie glare? _Could_ she glare? Naruto didn't know, but he had a hard time imagining her being anything other than expressionless.

Naruto swallowed. It made him uncomfortable sometimes, how she always seemed to be looking at him. He wasn't the sort of person people stared at—not in this world, at least.

"What is it? Do you need something?" he asked, trying to see what she wanted.

"…"

"Are you… upset?"

"…"

"Worried?"

"…" The way she stared at him was almost… miffed. But she nodded.

"About me?" Naruto guessed, although he couldn't understand why she would be.

"…" Somehow, it seemed to be the correct answer, though Naruto couldn't explain how. He certainly didn't know why she would be worried about him, but her nod said that she did.

"Because I was back late?"

"…"

'_So that's it. But why would she get upset about it? I mean, even if I stayed out late, there's no classes tomorrow so it wouldn't impede me at all. Is she worried about the class trip, maybe? I know a lot of the students are supposed to go shopping tomorrow—am I expected to accompany them as their teacher?_'

Naruto rubbed at the back of his head and gave her a sheepish grin. "I'm sorry about that. I met a few people today and stayed around to talk with them." Naruto gave an apologetic bow. "I didn't mean to make you worry."

Zazie stared at him before giving him a slow, drawn-out nod. Naruto hoped it meant she approved of his apology.

Still hanging upside down from the edge of the bed, Zazie reached up and pulled an envelope from under her pillow. She looked decidedly odd with her hair hanging straight down like that.

"…" She held out the envelope to him.

"For me?" Naruto asked, wondering who it could be from. Everyone he knew in the world lived on campus, and relatively closely, at that. "Did you see who left it?"

Zazie shook her head. Whoever had put the letter in their little mailbox must have done it while they were out, then.

The sender of the letter was revealed as soon as Naruto tore open the envelope. Wads of paper money dropped from it, along with a letter. It fluttered to the ground, falling open, and while Naruto couldn't read the words he could make out the crude drawing of the Headmaster's distinctive head.

"I'm getting paid already? I thought I would have to be here longer before I would actually get paid for this. It's only been a week," Naruto wondered aloud. He dropped to his knees to scoop up the money and fold the paper yen into small portions, which he slipped into his toad wallet. Gama-chan was bulging by the time he was done.

"Wow. I didn't know I could fit that much into Gama-chan at once. Then again, I haven't had this much money to put in him before."

"…"

Naruto returned Zazie's stare. Did she have an issue with him naming his wallet? He hoped not—Gama-chan was an awesome name, and he wasn't going to change it.

Oh. Right. He had to be polite. "Thanks for bringing me the letter, Zazie."

But Zazie wouldn't stop staring at him. Naruto wondered if anyone had ever told her that staring was rude—not that he was one to talk, considering that he was staring back at her. Did she eat enough? She looked pretty thin in the clothes she was wearing, although Naruto did suppose that she would have to be pretty skinny for the Acrobatics Club.

There was a long and uncomfortable silence—uncomfortable on his part, at least. Naruto couldn't tell how she felt about it.

The silence was broken, not by words, but by the sound of Zazie rolling off of the bed. She tucked her knees in and, no longer supported by her legs, fell off of the top bunk. Like a falling cat, she rotated to land on her feet.

Naruto had to admit to being impressed. Her head was maybe three feet off of the ground at the highest, the way she was hanging like that. From what he'd seen of this world, that sort of athletic ability wasn't very common at all.

Zazie walked over to what Naruto remembered Negi calling the 'microwave' and punched in some numbers. Naruto wondered if she was hungry, and if she was… "Why didn't you put anything in the microwave first?"

She turned around to look at him, then turned back to the counting down numbers on the microwave. Apparently, his comment didn't warrant a full-fledged stare.

Naruto shook his head—he felt stupid for saying anything when Zazie acted like that. He sat down on the couch—he was tired, but he certainly wasn't going to lie down and possibly fall asleep while she was still up and about. If Zazie was awake, she'd find out what the fox did to him in his sleep all too easily.

Her textbooks were neatly piled on the small table in front of the couch, alongside a not-quite-as-neat stack of papers. Naruto gave them a quick glance—he could recognize just a couple words from the instruction Negi had given him, but not nearly enough. "The", "her", "why", "English".

He also could understand some of the kana she used in the Japanese parts, though. Negi hadn't taught him that—but it was something he had discussed as a possibility after the first lesson. Spoken English and Japanese were completely different, with drastically different rules—but Naruto understood them without having to study them.

It had made sense, Negi had said, that the same may be true of reading and writing the languages, but only so long as he knew how to read in the first place. It was a relief to see that Negi was right. He would have to tell him that, later.

BEEEP!

Naruto jolted at the sudden noise. His heart thudded rapidly in his chest until he calmed down, realizing that it was only the microwave. He hadn't been aware that they were so loud. Actually, a lot of things in this world seemed to be noisy. Maybe that was just something that came with not having shinobi?

Zazie didn't seem surprised by the noise at all, and simply opened the machine and pulled out a small tray with her food on it. And not just any food, either. The smell of ramen made Naruto acutely aware that he hadn't had an opportunity to eat since getting out of school. A quick glance showed that she had only made a single bowl—nothing for him, then.

Naruto sighed, and returned to looking blankly at her homework. He couldn't even tell whether she had done well on it or not. But the delicious ramen taunted him, preventing him from focusing on that, either.

He was about to get up, leave the building, and go find someplace that would serve food this late when Zazie slid the bowl of ramen in front of him.

"For me?"

Zazie nodded.

"I'm… I… I mean, thank you."

She was quiet as she watched him eat, and he said nothing as he dove into the ramen. The silence was not so uncomfortable, this time around.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>

I would like to apologize for taking so long to get this chapter out. I had… real life problems. I actually had this part finished half a year ago, but I was intending for the chapter to extend all the way to the train trip to Kyoto: however, if I did that I would have had a disgustingly huge chapter.

Thank you so much for reading this.

Interesting fact: the term "Fugue" in music originates from the Latin terms for "to flee" (fugere) and "to chase" (fugare).

And thus, the first instance of mind-reading to show up in the story. Since she's so weak, Eva needs to use a potion just to do skin-contact-based mind-reading. Normally, a mage of her caliber wouldn't need to touch at all (see: Jack Rakan reading people's backstories). However, within her own mind she remains as powerful as ever.

**Dagon**: Dagon had his mythological origins as a god of fertility for the Assyro-Babylonians. In time, he developed into a Semitic god of grain and agriculture, and due to the similarity of his name to the old Hebrew word for fish into a god of fish and fishing. Modern interpretations of Dagon, however, owe much of their perspective to one H. P. Lovecraft. This Dagon is a maddening god of the sea, an aquatic being of terrible and mind-rending power; it was this entity that Evangeline drove off hundreds of years ago, described here because he will probably never show up again.

Unlike you may have often come across before, Happy Families Are All Alike does not have "demonic chakra". Instead, it has youki, which is something entirely different. Thank goodness Asuna doesn't know much about any sorts of special powers at all; the Kyoto Arc gives an excellent opportunity to explain _some_ of the questions that the story has created so far.

If you have any specific questions though, please feel free to ask! I can't promise I can answer all of them without ruining the story, but some of it I just haven't had an opportunity to explain in-story yet (although I intend to. It will just… take time to get to a point where that fits in without sounding forced).


	8. Year-Round Absorbed Curiosity

I don't own Naruto or Negima. I know, it depresses me too.

I know that I told a couple people in emails that I'd be starting the Kyoto Arc on this chapter, but… well, I nearly completed it, and it's about 20,000 words long, which is far too huge for a single chapter. So I've split it up into two. Which, yes, is the same thing I did last chapter.

Chapter title is a stage theme song from the game "Great Fairy Wars", from ZUN's Touhou series. He also composes its music.

Thanks to Ebony Scales for beta reading. Happy New Year's, everyone!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 8:<strong>

**Year-Round Absorbed Curiosity**

Someone banged on the door.

Naruto could never be said to enjoy sleep. Sharing his dreams with the mind of an entity such as what dwelled within him was never pleasant. But in that period after waking up—less than half aware, not quite awake and not quite asleep—Naruto could find pleasure, on those days where the nightmares didn't rouse him. Half-dreams flitted across his mind, uncorrupted by the presence of the Kyuubi, letting him find a measure of peace after the night.

Which meant, of course, that he didn't move to answer the door. The horrible people who wanted him to get up would just have to wait.

"Naruto-kun? Are you there?"

His sleepy mind slowly registered what was said. '_No,_' Naruto thought at them, _'not here. Come back later_.' He rolled over and stuffed his head under the pillow.

However, Naruto's impressive ability to ignore the world around him only went so far. The door whipped open and slammed against the wall with a loud thud, jolting him awake as three girls charged into his room. "Naruto-kun, is it true?" whoever they were asked, forcing him to open his eyes.

Naruto sat up in bed, stretching gingerly to make whatever damage the Kyuubi had done the night before had healed. It had, of course—it always did—but Naruto checked every time. He was pretty certain no one else in his family had whiskers, after all, so there was no telling what else the fox could do.

He threw a sleepy, spiteful glare at his students. They didn't seem to notice.

"Is it true?" one pressed again—Kugimiya Madoka, he believed.

"Mhuh?"

The other two girls pressed forwards. They must be Kakizaki Misa and Shiina Sakurako, from what Negi had told him. They were the sorts of people who went everywhere together. "That you only have one set of clothes! We heard there was a fire or flood or something at your home, and you had to move here without any clothing, or furniture, or games, or books, or… or… or… or anything!"

"Mwah?" What the hell were they talking about? Who would say something like that? Why were they pawing through his dresser?

"Stop! Th-that's my stuff! Stop looking through it!" Naruto stumbled his way out of bed, but his foot got caught in a tangle of bedding, causing him to fall on the ground in front of them.

Sakurako held up his folded up clothing—his only clothes aside from his pajamas, truth be told. Actually, aside from his scroll they were his only worldly possessions. She gave him a _look_. "No it's not—because there's no stuff here to look at."

Kakizaki nodded, looking him over. "Good thing Asakura told us about it, then. You can't go days reusing the same set of clothing like that! Especially not on a field trip," she said sagely, nodding her head at her own words of wisdom.

"Which means… shopping!"

Naruto wanted to refute them—the clothing was made for shinobi, and if you washed it you could wear a single set for years—but he couldn't. He didn't think that ninja clothing (or ninjas) was something they were supposed to know about.

Besides, he actually had money now. He didn't have to pay for housing, and it was easy to get food here—what else did he have to spend it on?

Naruto sighed and took his clothes from the cheerleader. He ducked into the bathroom to change, although he blushed horribly as he heard them giggling. What was so funny about it? He certainly wasn't going to change in front of them!

"How did she hear about it?" Naruto asked when he returned to the room. "I don't think I told anyone about the… fire."

Madoka shrugged. "She said she found an anonymous letter slipped under her door, but no one knows who sent it. I think Paru and the twins got letters, too."

Naruto tried to remember who 'Paru' was, but couldn't remember. "Sorry, who was Paru again? I forgot…" He sheepishly rubbed the back of his head.

Kakizaki giggled. "I completely forgot that you haven't been around as long as Negi-kun has! Paru is Haruna. That's the name she writes under."

Oh. Why would an author need to use a pseudonym? He had always thought fake names were reserved for infiltration and stealth and whatnot. Naruto dismissed it as another oddity of this world. "How many people know about it?"

"Everyone calls her Paru, Naruto-kun. Well, Negi-kun doesn't, but he can be sort of formal, y'know? And Nodoka and Yue have been her best friends forever, so they don't either."

"No, I meant about what was in the letters. How many people know that the 'fire' destroyed all my stuff?"

Sakurako looked thoughtful as she raised a finger to her chin. "I'd say… just about everyone in the city."

"What? How is that even possible?" Naruto wondered aloud. He was new here, and had little social interaction, so perhaps it was forgivable that he wouldn't know one the unwritten rule of rumors. The three quickest ways for a message to spread were 3.) E-mail, 2.) Telephone, and 1.) Tell a girl.

People sometimes mixed around the positions, but it is almost universally agreed that these are the quickest ways to conceivably spread a rumor. Naruto, when he eventually learned about this rule, would agree completely, and marvel at the almost supernatural speed by which a gossiping girl can spread secrets.

Sakurako shrugged, obviously not concerned at all. "You know, it just spreads over the grapevine. Like… grapes. Or maybe really fresh raisins."

Madoka bopped Sakurako over the head. "Owwie! Kugimin, what was that for?"

"Can we just get going before you confuse him more? Naruto-kun isn't any different from anyone else—he can't get your weird analogies!" Madoka lectured as she grabbed hold of her friends by the wrists. She pulled the two towards the door. "Come on, Naruto-kun. We're going shopping!"

Thus Naruto found himself following the cheerleading trio—largely because if he didn't come willingly, he was rather certain they would physically drag him along. They chattered about boys, who was wearing what outfit, what they would do today (Naruto was fairly certain there just weren't enough hours in the day for them to do everything they were talking about), what they would do on the field trip, whether X would confess to Y, classes, what team they would cheer for (or against), their band, and generally a thousand different topics that Naruto could hardly follow at all.

So he didn't try, and just listened to their voices. Maybe he'd actually pick something up that way, but Naruto was thinking about other things.

Namely, about those letters. From what he could get out of Sakurako, Haruna and Asakura were the worse gossips in the school, with the twins following close behind (actually, with almost half the class following closely behind, but the twins especially so). Even Naruto knew that meant that the sender had meant for the info to get spread around to absolutely everyone.

Or perhaps meant to reach specific individuals, but intended to get the information to them indirectly—perhaps so they wouldn't know who it was getting the information to them, so it couldn't be tracked, or so they wouldn't know that someone was trying to get the information specifically to them in the first place. But what did the sender hope to achieve with the letters? When people intentionally spread rumors, it was usually negative—unpleasant character traits, a big mistake, a sordid affair—but this one didn't seem bad.

Of course, Naruto could just be paranoid… but then again, someone was spreading letters about him. He remembered enough warm lectures from the Hokage to know that paranoia was a good trait for a shinobi to have—even one who never passed the Academy (and thus, couldn't technically be said to be a shinobi).

The only consequence of the rumor that Naruto could see was that he seemed to be getting new clothing… was that the purpose of it? So far as he was aware, he had no enemies in this world, so it was as likely as anything else. If so, then the sender had taken an unnecessarily complicated way to go about doing it—although it did provide a handy excuse for why he didn't have any possessions at all.

* * *

><p>Zazie awoke long enough to mumble incoherently and clench ink-stained fingers, before drifting off again into half-slumber. She didn't really <em>need<em> sleep, but it felt so good after a night of work…

* * *

><p>"Wow! It's so nice outside!" Sakurako shouted in Naruto's ear as soon as they got off the train.<p>

Naruto rubbed at the abused organ as he looked around. Although the shouting was completely unnecessary, he had to agree. It was warm, but not so warm that their long-sleeved clothing was uncomfortable, and the blue sky held few clouds.

Kakizaki stretched her arms over her head, moaning from her first real movement in half an hour. "Yeah, it really is. Especially after how cramped the train cars were."

"Right. So… let's go to karaoke right now!"

"Sing 'till we're hoarse!"

Madoka sighed and rubbed her temples. "First you say it's a beautiful day, then say you want to go inside?"

Sakurako whimpered like a kicked puppy. "B-but Kugimin, we're in Harajuku! Tokyo! We have to go to karaoke, we just have to!"

"No! Besides, remember what we came here for? Field trip, free activity day, new clothes? We can't blow off all our money just having fun when we need to shop for—come back here!" Madoka yelled at the retreating backs of the other two cheerleaders.

"I'm sorry about that, Naruto-kun," Madoka apologized. She threw a glare at her friends, who were trying to get something from a nearby street vendor. "It's just that they have problems staying focused, that's all."

Naruto waved the apology aside. To be honest, he was sort of glad that they got distracted so easily. When he found out they were taking him shopping, he thought they would have been all over him, but if it was like this he wouldn't have to deal with the three of them all paying attention to him at once. "It's not a problem… Kugimin."

Madoka blushed slightly. "That's just Sakurako's stupid nickname. She and Kakizaki are the only ones that call me that."

"Hm? What's that, Kugimin?"

"Nothing, Sakurako," Madoka said with a sigh. The other cheerleader stared curiously at Madoka for a moment before shaking her head and handing her a pastry.

"The crêpe vendor guy had a discount for teachers, so he gave all of them to us for cheap because Naruto-kun was here!" Sakurako said excitedly as she shoved the cone-shaped pastry into Naruto's hands. Then again, she seemed to do everything excitedly. "It's gōya, so it's bitter!"

"Oh. Uh, thanks," Naruto mumbled out. The attention and cheerfulness was uncomfortable when it was directed at him. He took a cautious bite of his crêpe, and only barely avoided making a face from the bitterness. But the bitterness was followed by a sweet flavor, more than enough to cancel out the bitter taste, and after a moment he took another bite. In moments the crêpe was gone.

The city was huge. Naruto had thought he came from a big place, but there wasn't any comparison. He could see buildings that reached so high that they seemed that they would tickle the sun as it passed, and lights glistened across the city in more colors than he had ever seen. It seemed that every few feet there was another store, something new to buy on every corner.

And it was loud—louder even than Mahora had been. Naruto actually had to concentrate to pay attention to what the girls had to say, and the noise was such that he couldn't really make out words from too far away. He imagined that with so much sound pollution he wasn't hearing much better than an ordinary person did. A headache was already starting to push against his temples.

Fewer people walked the streets than Naruto had expected. When the cheerleaders had been talking about Harajuku, it had sounded like it would be unbearably full of people. While there was a crowd, it wasn't nearly as thick as he thought it would have been.

While this made it easy to avoid passersby, it provided no such protection against his students, and Naruto had hardly finished his crepe before they pulled him into the nearest store.

"Do they have clothes here?"

"…"

"You're an idiot, Misa. Shouldn't you have thought about that _before_ you dragged us in?" Madoka demanded with her hands on her hips. Kakizaki ducked behind Naruto, leaving him to cower before Madoka's glare.

"Come on, Madoka, it's not like we're on a time limit," Kakizaki said from behind him, although Naruto didn't think he posed much of a barrier when she was still a head taller than he was. "And look! They sell music!"

The more sensible of the cheerleaders started to look, but caught herself before turning around. "You can't distract me that easily! We can't blow all our money on—"

"On Avril Lavigne's latest album?"

"Yea—wait, I mean—" Kakizaki burst out laughing at Madoka's sudden hesitancy.

Sakurako chimed in, adding, "Kugimin, look! It's ten percent off, and—hey, isn't that Negi-kun?"

Like a whip, the three of them snapped about to follow Sakurako's pointing finger. As she said, Negi was there—for once, not wearing that suit of his, in favor of a hoodie with some sort of pants. Due to his recent over-exposure to different clothing terms (and before they even started shopping!), Naruto thought they were jeans.

"Yeah, it is! But what's Konoka doing here with sensei?"

"Shopping, probably," Naruto said. Poor guy. Did she steal Negi away, like the girls had done to him? They seemed to be rather relaxed with one another, though. Although the long-haired brunette wore a soft sweater and skirt, what caught Naruto's attention the most was her large, puffy hat.

"So cute!" Sakurako squealed, her hands going up to cover her mouth.

"Which one?"

Madoka sighed. "Focus here! Let's see what they're doing."

Kakizaki nodded and crept forwards, the rest of them following. Naruto brought up the rear as they trailed the two.

Watching Konoka and Negi was odd. They talked with each other so easily, laughed at each other's jokes. He couldn't hear them, but they didn't seem tense at all. Naruto hadn't ever followed ordinary people while they were just… living… before. They smiled—really smiled—a lot. He couldn't help but compare it to how he behaved when he was with others. It didn't measure up at all.

Focused as he was on Negi and Konoka, it wasn't until several minutes had passed (and suffering from a number of stares from passers-by), that he thought to ask the question that was on everyone's mind.

"Why are we hiding from them?"

"I—um, that is…" Kakizaki chuckled and rubbed at the back of her head. "I don't know?"

Sakurako and Madoka reached out to bop her upside the head as one. "Come on, let's go say hi," Sakurako said, leaning out of the corner to go into the shop Konoka had pulled Negi into.

"Ow! Jeez, you didn't both have to—hey, listen! I think I can hear them," Kakizaki hissed as she pulled the perky orange-haired girl back behind the corner.

They quieted and looked into the store. Konoka held a sweater to her chest, asking, "How's this, Negi-kun?"

Negi smiled at her. "Very nice! It looks cute."

"Really?" The word rushed out as she turned to him and held out the article, which was covered in words Naruto couldn't read (although the color was rather fetching).

"Yes. This sort of clothing really fits you, Konoka-san."

"That's not what I meant, Negi-kun," she said, pulling him into a spontaneous hug. "But you're still so sweet!"

Naruto had an uneasy feeling as the cheerleading trio shared significant looks. They looked sweaty, and their eyes had a look of both horror and adoration. This was going to end badly. "Are they… on a Date?!"

"What?"

The girls seemed to explode at their own words.

"B-but Negi-kun's, like, ten!" Madoka said, trying to be the voice of reason. "I'm sure they're just shopping—you know, like brother and sister!"

Kakizaki waved the idea away with her hands, and her voice was incredulous as she responded. "No way! Brothers don't take sisters to Harajuku!"

Sakurako nodded knowingly. "And it's not like Negi-kun's an ordinary ten-year-old."

"Oh crap! Oh crap! This could be really, really bad!"

Naruto cocked his head. "What? Why?"

Sakurako wrung her hands frantically, pacing back in forth as she tried to explain. "If they find out that a teacher is taking advantage of a student, Negi-kun could be—"

"Oh no! He'd totally be fired! There's no way that would slide! What do we do? What do we do?"

Madoka reached out to grab hold of the other two's hands. "C-calm down! We can't go jumping to conclusions, here! Besides, what if Konoka is the one fooling around with Negi-kun?"

"Wait, I don't think she would…"

"Oh, yeah! That makes sense!" Kakizaki exclaimed, pounding her fist into her hand. "I mean, she's really good at taking care of people, and that feeling could turn into romance… things happen, right? Forbidden things that happen behind closed doors?

"Just look at them!"

The four of them edged out of hiding to look at the unsuspecting duo. Konoka held up a shirt in one hand and a skirt in the other, trying to get Negi to decide on something. Negi smiled and nodded, leading to another embrace. A clicking sound from behind them interrupted their observation.

Naruto turned about to look at Kakizaki. "What was that?"

"Hm? Oh, I took a picture. We need to get help!" She said, waving a small rectangular object about. Was that what she used to take a picture? But it was so… small. There wasn't even a flash, and no curtain to block out the light! Naruto didn't see how that could be called a camera.

Sakurako gasped. "T-tell the school? B-but!"

"We can't!" Madoka hissed, reaching out to grab at the object in Kakizaki's hands. "They'll totally get expelled!"

Kakizaki shook her head, lavender hair swaying as she pulled away from Madoka. "What? No, of course I'm not telling the teachers! We need an expert, so I'm going to get Asuna. She's their roommate, right? I'll phone her and tell her what's going one. Once she sees what's happening, she's sure to come running!"

Madoka and Sakurako oooh'd and aaah'd appreciatively and let Kakizaki fiddle around with her "phone" for a moment.

"Asuna! We have an emergency. Look at the picture I sent! What? No, of course it's a problem. They're obviously on a Date, with a capital 'D'! We—no, of course we aren't. Wait, don't hang up!"

Kakizaki looked despairingly at her phone. "She… she didn't believe me. What are we going to do?"

"Follow them?" Naruto suggested. He had talked a little bit with Konoka each day when he went to get help from Negi, and he didn't think that this was romantic. But still… "If they could get expelled, we need to make sure that they don't, right?"

"That's a good idea," Madoka said as she took a step away to look down the street. "Hey, they're moving. We should gAGHK!"

Naruto's hand reached out and grabbed the back of her shirt. He pulled her behind the corner a mere second before Negi turned around, somehow sensing something even in the midst of the chaos of the city. "I had no idea he was so aware," Naruto mused aloud.

"Hah, look who's talking," Madoka muttered, rubbing at her throat. "But next time, could you grab my arm or something?"

"Shush!" Sakurako whispered. She motioned down the street. "Listen!"

The four of them crept forwards to get within hearing range of the duo. Konoka was looking back at Negi quizzically. "What's wrong, Negi-kun?"

The red-headed boy turned back to Konoka and gave a sheepish laugh. "Oh, I just thought I felt something, but I guess there was nothing."

"A-Although… Konoka-san, I wanted to apologize." Negi stared down at his shoes, his posture betraying his bashfulness as he continued, "I mean, it's your day off, and I'm sure you were looking forwards to getting ready for the trip..."

Konoka only smiled in response and shook her head. "No, I'm just happy you asked, Negi-kun. I didn't think you would ever come to me for something like this."

"K-Konoka-san…"

Madoka, Kakizaki, and Sakurako shared a significant look, before collectively squeeing.

"Hey, hey, hey! Th-that's so cute! Squeeeee!"

"So romantic! I'm jealous!"

"They're dating! They're totally dating!"

"That's soooo off limits!"

* * *

><p>'Twas morning, the sun radiant with banners, when the noble and elegant Yukihiro Ayaka left her dorm. A beautiful morning, as mornings were wont to be in Mahora—though not quite so beautiful as she, of course.<p>

It was, she mused, fortuitous that her roommates were of such pleasant disposition—the peaceful Ayaka hated to think what would have happened if she stayed with that monkey Asuna. As it was, however, Naba Chizuru and Murakami Natsumi made for quite agreeable companions. Particularly in mornings such as these, when the gentle Ayaka needed her beauty sleep.

However, this meant that it was quite late in the morning when she finally left her room. Thus, the first thing she did upon waking was head to the cafeteria. And it was there, before she even had a chance to eat, that the beleaguered Ayaka did find her day dimmed.

Asuna was there.

When the generous Ayaka approached the girl, it was simply to make sure that the walking disaster wasn't going to cause any trouble on what should be a lovely day.

It wasn't, of course, because she was curious as to what the redhead was doing today, or because she wanted to hang out with her, or because they were friends—heaven forbid! It wasn't any of these things.

Of course it wasn't.

Asuna sat on one of the chairs in the cafeteria lounge, Negi-sensei's adorable pet ermine beside her as she argued into her cellphone. As the curious Ayaka approached, she heard half of the other side of the conversation—Asuna must have set her phone to speaker so that she could eat her burger (although how she decided eating a burger for breakfast was a good idea was beyond the Class Representative).

Obviously, the polite Ayaka wasn't eavesdropping. She would _never_ do something as uncouth as that.

"It's incredible Asuna! You won't believe how fast this is going!" A familiar female voice said, obviously yelling into her own phone.

"Seriously, they could leave the school and get married any minute—that's how fast this is going! We TOLD you they were dating!" Was that… Sakurako? What was she blabbering on about?

A confused voice—that of a young male—also spoke, his voice coming from at least a foot away from the phone on the other end. "What's going on? Who are you talking to?"

The altruistic Ayaka chose this moment to make her own appearance. Whatever it was Asuna had gotten herself embroiled in, it would be up to her—her kind and far more competent Class Representative—to get her out of the mess. "Is something the matter, Asuna-san?"

"Eh? Class Rep?" Asuna so eloquently responded. "O-Oh, no, it's nothing. Just three idiots jumping to conclusions."

"B-But seriously! Look at this, they're totally in love!"

Asuna tried to keep the phone from her, but the indomitable Ayaka managed to get it out of her hands to look at the picture Kakizaki sent. She turned the phone over to see who the gossip mill had targeted, only to see—

For a single, terrifying moment, the delicate Ayaka's heart stopped. Surely… surely that wasn't her beloved and gentle Negi-sensei there, was it? Surely Konoka—the sweet and kind girl—wouldn't be so crass as to attempt to steal away her beloved flower of innocence?

But the photograph showed the truth, and its image truly was worth a thousand words. The infuriated Ayaka turned to yell at her companion, flailing her arms in her anger. "How… how… how indecent! What manner of cruel joke is this? Have you no shame, you hooligan?"

The Class Representative threw Asuna's phone onto the chair, narrowly missing the ermine. The phone landed image up, the incriminating photo displaying Negi-sensei and Konoka happily drinking from the same delicious-looking iced fruit drink.

Asuna leapt from her chair to get away from the blonde. "It-it wasn't me! I don't know anything about it!"

The enraged Ayaka couldn't accept that. Not aware of the blooming romance between her two roommates? Even Asuna wasn't so dim-witted. "Don't lie to me!"

She leapt at her long-time enemy, reaching forwards to grab at her twintails. Asuna fell backwards, her own hands clasping about the other's face, and the two fell to the ground in violent tangle of scratching, hair-pulling, and choking. Neither noticed the ermine nodding appreciatively at the sight of the cat-fight.

As the pair scrambled to murder one another, the cheerleaders continued to talk on the other end of the phone, blithely unaware of the life-or-death struggle occurring at the other end of the conversation.

"Oh, wow! Things are heating up—it's time for us to make our move!" Kakizaki exclaimed.

"B-But what do we do? You said Negi would get kicked out, right?" the male voice said again, obviously worried and—was that Naruto-sensei?

The inquisitive Ayaka's inattention was punished with a brutal head butt from her eternal nemesis, drawing her attention back to the fray as the dialogue continued.

"Ugh! Don't remind me," Sakurako said. "Although now that I think about it, it doesn't really come as a surprise that this is happening."

Madoka agreed. "Yeah, remember back in Spring Break? There was that huge uproar when they found Negi-kun and Konoka hugging."

"Really? And they didn't make him leave back then?" Naruto inquired.

"No, not for just a hug!"

"Although it might have been more… you know how the Headmaster is always setting up o-miai for Konoka?"

"Isn't she his granddaughter?"

"That's right, Naruto-kun! I was about to explain that to you, but when did you find out?"

Kakizaki interrupted them, just as the skilled Ayaka managed to force Asuna into a half-nelson. "That doesn't matter! You must have heard the talks, right? The omiai she was going to was for Konoka and Negi-kun! It being an "accident" was just from the rumors!"

"REALLY?" Sakurako all but screamed. "I knew it, I knew it! I heard that Negi-kun is a prince!"

"Wait, what? He never said anything like that to me!"

"Of _course_ he didn't, Naruto-kun! He never said it to anyone—that's because he's a prince! He's here in secret to find a wife."

"Are you sure? I don't think princes actually—"

"Oh. My. God. It must have worked! They must have had a really nice omiai, and are now deciding to take it further! I mean, think about it; there has to be a _real_ reason a ten-year-old was given a teaching position, and everyone knows royalty marry young…"

"Hmm…"

"Of course, of course. Come on, girls! We are the cheerleaders of Class 3-A, after all!"

The horrified Ayaka pulled away from the equally stunned Asuna as a trio of voices sounded out from the phone. "In the name of the Cheerleaders! We support their love!"

"NNNOOOOOOO!"

The furious Ayaka leapt away from her rival to snatch at the phone in single-minded desperation. "HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!"

"Eeeek!"

"I-It's Class Rep!"

The desperate Ayaka turned Asuna's phone to shout into it. "I hereby order you as representative of Class 3-A: There can be no impure relationships between teacher and student! Stop them, no matter what it takes!"

She fiddled with the buttons on Asuna's phone until she found the one to send the camera image across, so she could glare at the three of them. "Kakizaki-san! Kugimiya-san! Sakurako-san! Keep an eye on them, and don't let them get any closer to one another than absolutely necessary!"

"B-But…" Sakurako muttered into the phone, "We're cheerleaders, right? We cheer people on…"

The dreadful Ayaka glared into the phone with a fury that would terrify the most wretched devil from hell. "**That's all right with you… isn't it.**"

It wasn't a question.

"R-Roger!"

"Yes ma'am!"

"In the name of the Cheerleaders! We support the Class Rep's personal, self-centered agenda!"

* * *

><p>Cecil McBiew. The latest store Negi and Konoka had perused, it so far appeared to be no more fitting than any of the previous. Even so, Negi found that he rather enjoyed the day they had spent out together, even as long as it was dragging on.<p>

Konoka grabbed him by the arm to gently pull him in front of a pair of garments. "How about these, Negi-kun?"

"Matching outfits?" Negi asked, examining the clothes. They were layered; a dark green t-shirt with the G9 logo, with a second, open shirt in pale yellow atop that. One set of clothes had a skirt, the other a pair of shorts.

"I don't know… wouldn't wearing matching outfits be pretty embarrassing for you?" Although, personally, Negi thought that they were just too dissimilar. Not that he didn't like her—because he did!—but he thought that two people who were so different wearing matching outfits was a little… odd.

And… well, Negi knew that wearing the same outfit was something lovers did sometimes. He didn't want to see what the reaction of the class would be when they saw them wearing the same thing. "Apocalyptic" was a word that came to mind.

"Oh, I wouldn't mind at all," Konoka said brightly—only to be cut off as a couple butted in, shoving the two of them to the side. "Eeyah!"

"Oh, Kugio-kun! These are so _adorable_! Buy them for me?"

"Ahaha! Sure thing! Yo, clerk! Bag those outfits up for us, would ya'?"

Negi rubbed at his chest and pushed himself to his feet. "Are you alright, Konoka-san? They pushed us pretty hard."

He helped Konoka to her feet, although he did take a moment to glare at the couple that knocked them over. They were already leaving—all he could make out of them was that the girl was blonde with her hair tied up into two pigtails, and that the boy was dark-haired. The girl wore a sailor suit, and the boy the uniform of the yell squad.

He could hear their voices fading as they walked away. "Oh, wow! I promise you, Kugio-kun, we'll look so cute wearing these together…" Negi couldn't help but feel a certain level of indignation. They hadn't even apologized!

Konoka, kind as always, waved the problem away. "Nah, I'm fine. Besides, some of the girls in class introduce themselves with flying kicks—especially in the Library Exploration Club! This is nothing."

Negi protested—ramming into a stranger in the street was certainly different from the well-meaning roughhousing that went on in class—but Konoka reassured him. Actually, she seemed rather more upset when she turned around to find that the rude pair had absconded with the clothes she had been looking at.

"Awww, those were the last ones, too. And they would have been really cute, too," Konoka muttered, sounding almost dejected.

Negi was getting a little discouraged by how difficult all this was. He had just wanted to get her a nice gift, but it didn't seem like any store had something that really fit—even though he had caved in and got Konoka's help, too. Konoka would know what she wanted better than he did.

He was a bit embarrassed to ask for help to get her present, but Negi hadn't ever gotten a gift for anyone other than Anya and his cousin Nekane before, and this relationship was a completely different kind than that. He was certain he'd get it wrong on his own.

A store across the street caught his eye. Murasame Sports… "Th-Then what about that one?"

Konoka perked up and leaned around him to look. The long haired brunette gasped and pulled him over to the shop. "This is perfect! I told you that you didn't need my help."

Negi blushed at her praise. "I-I don't know about that, Konoka-san."

Konoka giggled and grabbed his hand with her own. "Oh, stop it. I know you'd choose wonderfully even without me here," she reassured him.

"Ahaha…" Negi laughed nervously, rubbing at the back of his head. He turned to focus on the store, and was able to quickly find something he thought she'd like—although finding something so fast seemed like a problem to him.

He showed the gift to Konoka, to see what she thought. "Oh, it's wonderful! You should get it right a—AYAAA!"

She was cut off—again—as a strange girl delivered a flying kick and knocked them away. "I'll take this please!"

"R-Right… that's, uh, 3000 yen…"

"W-Wait!"

But Negi called out too late—the dark-skinned redhead (the second person with a twin tails hairstyle to assault them that day) had already bought the weights and fled with them.

And so matters continued. Negi and Konoka wandered around nearly the whole of Harajuku, meandering from shop to shop. Their search for the perfect gift was thwarted time and time again by the seemingly endless crowds of the city, which apparently was hell-bent on preventing them from buying _anything_.

Although Konoka didn't seem to get frustrated at all, Negi was becoming annoyed. Well, not _very_ annoyed—after all, he was getting to see Tokyo! The city was so different from Wales. The biggest city he had ever been in London during a vacation, but Tokyo was a breed apart. So much brighter, so much louder, so much larger! Even the daily rush to school in Mahora was small in comparison to the sheer _size_ of the place; the smaller crowds from earlier in the day quickly disappeared under the masses of people that filled the city.

Despite the constant interruptions when they tried to buy something, he was enjoying the trip. Just shopping was exciting—everything was so _different_. The feeling as they walked between stores was unlike any other place Negi had ever been to.

At one store they found games—there were easily a dozen games that they knew she wanted, but Konoka eventually decided on getting her the new Soul Caliber game—only for the strange couple to show up again and buy it out from under them. Still, it was fun to leave aside normal games to look at the dōjin ones made by smaller groups and independent programmers. At another shop they found a collector's edition case of her favorite movies, and at yet another shop they managed to find an outfit Konoka thought would be adorable to wear during the upcoming MahoraFest.

Despite managing to find some really great gifts, they weren't able to get so much as one of them. Then Negi's wallet disappeared when they entered an old-fashioned clothes shop, and he had thought it lost forever in the Tokyo streets—but when they later went to get takoyaki (they had been shopping for hours, and by that point were starving!), he found it again, in the exact same pocket it had gone missing from!

And it was then, wallet freshly rediscovered, that he saw it. It was perfect—so absolutely perfect that Negi couldn't believe that he hadn't thought to get it before. The perfect gift for her was right there in the display window of the shop beside the takoyaki stand; a music box, so elegantly designed as to belong to a princess. He was right beside the store, and could faintly hear the notes ringing through the glass, forming the song that he had just days ago learned was her favorite. It was _perfect_.

Negi handed his wallet—sans debit card—to Konoka so that she could get the takoyaki while he went for the present (he wouldn't notice that Konoka just smiled and bought it with her own money while he was gone). He slipped out of line to head into the store with card in hand, not noticing the hand of a disguised blonde boy reach into his pocket nor hearing the quiet curse when the hand found nothing.

Likewise, Negi had no way to notice that the thick crowds around the store were blocking three girls from pushing through. And such was the noise of the street that Negi didn't hear the quiet scream of despair from those three same girls when he successfully bought the music box.

Konoka was delighted when he showed it to her and hugged him, agreeing that it really was the best gift he could have found. He was ready to keep exploring Tokyo—they had only been to Harajuku so far, and there was still so much to do! There was the rest of Shibuya to see, and they hadn't been to Akibahara or Jinbōchō at all.

Akibahara sounded so exciting! He had read that it was known for catering to otaku and anime lovers, and for its amazing electronics stores. The Meldiana Magic Academy hadn't exactly been up-to-date when it came to technology, and Negi had loved moving to the more modern Japan and catching up. Seeing all the new games and computers sounded fun, and he knew that Chiu—er, that is, Chisame—had pointed out some of the best stores to go to on her website.

And Jinbōchō sounded wonderful too… for the exact opposite reason of Akibahara. Negi loved antiques and the feel of old books, and Jinbōchō had that in strides. He was pretty certain that at least one of the antique stores there would cater to magical clientele… it was embarrassing to admit it, but a few of his had gotten damaged when he had fought Evangeline. And he'd spent all of the bullets for his magic gun, but there hadn't any support for cartridge-based magic firearms since World War One (although enchanted guns were a different story). Perhaps he could try an ordinary antique store? Negi knew that a lot of mages didn't think to look in the mundane stores, but a surprising amount of magical goods got traded around without anyone realizing what they were.

But when Negi brought this up to Konoka (sans mentions of magic or guns, of course—she wasn't supposed to know about that!), she instead suggested that they go find someplace quiet to rest. Negi tried to argue, but somehow—he wasn't entirely certain how it happened—he ended up agreeing with her.

As they weaved in between clusters of passersby, Negi found himself free to think. The majority of the day had been occupied by the unbearable difficult decision of "what to buy?", but now that he had answered that problem his mind wandered.

Konoka… Negi turned to examine her as she walked, the girl blithely unaware of his scrutiny. Why did her parents not wish for her to know about magic? Negi knew that it was important not to let ordinary people know about the supernatural, but why would they wish to hide it from their own daughter?

Negi lived with her and could clearly feel that she had potential. A lot of it, although Negi didn't have much experience measuring magical power. And even if she had none, exceptions were made for non-magical family members of mages.

He simply couldn't understand why someone would try to hide something so great a part of their lives from their own child. Well, Negi didn't know if he was in any place to think that… after all, he didn't have children, and he didn't know the circumstances behind it.

He silently berated himself for his thoughts—Konoka was such a nice girl that Negi couldn't imagine that her parents would do something like that for their own reasons. He didn't know why, but he was certain that they had a good reason for it.

Just as Negi knew his father had a good reason for being gone.

It wasn't a belief, or something he had to convince himself of. He _knew_ the Thousand Master was alive. He _knew_ there was a reason he was gone. He _knew_ that it was a good reason, because it _had_ to be. There had never been any sort of argument with himself, no need for reassurance from his cousin.

It was the solid, indelible fact upon which his world was built.

Even so… even knowing that, Negi still needed to know what that cause was. He still needed to learn about him—to find him!

A shiver ran down Negi's spine at the thought. He was so _close_. Ever since Evangeline had told him about his father's house in Kyoto, he had to restrain himself from simply leaving.

Every nerve in his body told him to take his wand and fly across the country right away. The clue he needed was only just beyond his reach—he had only to stretch, and he would be a step closer to finding out the truth about Nagi Springfield.

He needed to know why. Why had he been left behind? What happened to cause that night, six years ago? Where did his father go? Why was he alone? When Negi thought about these questions, he felt short of breath and his heart beat a staccato rhythm in his chest. The urge to leave was almost enough to cause him to depart, right there in the middle of the street.

But he couldn't do that. Negi wanted to become a Magister Magi in order to follow his father, and his path towards that end lay in teaching. And 3-A depended on him—he couldn't simply abandon them and all his responsibilities towards them. What sort of sensei, what sort of mage, what sort of friend, would he be if he did that? He was certain that the Thousand Master would be disappointed if he actually behaved in such a manner.

Still, at almost every turn Negi found his thoughts wandering towards the trip. And with the trip came thoughts of a certain letter lying in his room.

His class trip to Kyoto had an "opposing party" that almost resulted in the trip being canceled. The Kansai Magic Association which ruled over Western Japan (or the magical portions, at least) objected to a wizard of the occident leading a trip into their territory, and tried to prevent it.

Negi had been worried that it was his fault—after all, he would be the one going there—but the Headmaster had reassured him that it wasn't so. The Kanto Magic Association had long feuded with the Kansai over the future of magical Japan. The Kansai Magic Association fiercely opposed the presence of any sort of foreigner in Japan; the Kanto Magic Association, which headed Eastern Japan, was far more willing to accept the non-Japanese.

The trip Negi was planning was simply another point in contention between the two opposing forces. Hopefully the last such point; the letter the Headmaster had given him was supposed to help bridge the gap between the two.

There were certain parties that objected to the idea of the two sides growing closer. Negi knew why, but he couldn't understand it—what goes through someone's head to make them think that continued conflict was better than peace? According to the Headmaster, that faction in the Kansai Magic Association might try to prevent him from reaching their elder.

Negi had to admit that he was more than a little nervous. How couldn't he be, when there was so much riding on him delivering the letter? Negi didn't know the entire history of the tension between Eastern and Western Japan, although he had certainly started studying Japanese history once he knew he was coming here.

But he didn't need to know the specifics of the past to imagine what someone might be willing to do. If their goal was already to provoke, or at least maintain, hostility, then Negi didn't think that they would balk at getting their hands dirty to stop him.

It frightened him a little to think about it, but the Western mages might really try to hurt him.

He took comfort in his defeat of Evangeline. Maybe he had been saved when the barrier came back online, but he had still managed to beat one of the most powerful mages ever! He didn't think anything that the Kansai extremists did would equal the sheer desperation of that fight.

He smiled at the thought. No, compared to fighting Evangeline the upcoming trip would be a walk in the park.

"Hm? Is something funny, Negi-kun?" Konoka asked, her sweet and gentle voice lightly teasing. "It must be pretty good if you didn't notice you walked out onto the street."

"Eh? Ah!" Negi looked around in bewilderment. He hadn't noticed that they left the crowded streets of Harajuku to a much less travelled section by a school. It seemed tiny, in comparison to the titanic size of Mahora.

Negi chuckled ruefully as he realized what he did. "I guess I'm pretty lucky no cars are coming by right now, huh? I'm so sorry about that, Konoka-san."

"There's nothing for you to apologize about, Negi-kun. Stop saying that you're sorry for everything!" Konoka scolded him, but the smile on her face and the kindness of her voice stole the bite from her words.

There didn't seem to be anyone nearby, something for which Negi was grateful. He was starting to get tired enough to wobble as he walked. "This was really fun! I can't believe how exciting Tokyo's been."

He turned to ask Konoka how she felt, but stumbled over his feet. The girl grabbed hold of his arm to keep him from falling. "Yeah, it really was. But maybe we should sit down and rest? You're not walking straight…"

"A-Alright," Negi muttered, realizing that it was an argument he lost before he started. Convincing Konoka to change her mind was very similar to asking the tide to stop (without magic).

And…well, he was starting to get tired. The child teacher silently vowed not to go shopping without augmenting his body with magic again. This was just too exhausting otherwise.

Konoka walked over to a short staircase and sat down, motioning for Negi to do the same. He almost tripped as he joined her, a clear statement from his body that he needed to rest. Once more, his thoughts wandered.

Who was Uzumaki Naruto? It had only been a couple days since they started their lessons on reading. Negi hadn't been expecting much—he knew that learning something as elaborate as reading took time. But Naruto…

Naruto blew his expectations away. Only a few short lessons and Naruto could already identify several key sounds, and could recognize (and more importantly, comprehend) some of the most common words on sight. His learning capacity was fast. Too fast.

Negi didn't like to think something that might be termed insulting towards his fellow teacher, but he didn't think that Naruto was very gifted when it came to intellectual matters. Even if he were good at them and the most intelligent person alive on top of that, Negi didn't think that he would be able to learn quite this quickly. At this rate, he expected Naruto to be a fluent reader within one or two weeks. The speed was insane.

At first, he had thought that it was due to the same cause as his ability to absorb languages, but the more Negi thought about it the more he was certain that wasn't so. After all, Naruto had been exposed to the written word countless times without spontaneously becoming literate, and even the unbelievable rate at which he was learning to read was slow in comparison to the speed with which he acquired new tongues.

Negi knew there might be a relationship between the two he just hadn't seen yet, but he doubted it. He could name a dozen small reasons why, but none of them were quite enough to justify his certainty. He just _knew_, the same way he knew the answer to an equation without having to run through the steps to solve it.

It seemed that life only posed questions for him, and hid the answers just beyond his reach. Negi tried to focus his thoughts, hoping to come up with some new insight. But it had been a long day and his mind was too fogged and tired to concentrate.

Unbound, his thoughts drifted from memories to study guides he made for the class, from how wonderful it was that the Japanese language could apply the word 'Onēchan' so broadly to what the future may hold to a murky sea of daydreams.

Negi didn't notice as sleep gently settled over him, and the musings of an idle mind turned into sweet dreams of a family that never was.

* * *

><p>It didn't surprise Konoka at all when Negi-kun fell over onto her. After all, they had been shopping all day! She was certain that he must be exhausted.<p>

"Jeez, Negi-kun. You're just too cute like this," she whispered to him with a smile. After his initial fall he had curled up, his head resting on her lap. He really was just too sweet.

Negi-kun's sister—well, cousin—was really lucky to have such an adorable little "brother" stay with her. Konoka wished Daddy would hurry up and get her one too, but she supposed that wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

Which really was a pity. But until then, she'd have to make do with Negi-kun, although Konoka didn't really think it was "making do" at all. She gently ran her fingers over his hair, smoothing down what had become ruffled. It was very soft.

If she did get a brother, she hoped he would be even half as adorable as Negi-kun.

"I'm a little surprised, though. It really seemed like you've grown up since you've come over here," Konoka whispered above his head. "But when you lie down and sleep like this, you look so childlike and innocent. Not as mature as you normally look at all."

She giggled quietly. "Maybe I pushed it a little too hard today, hm?"

But it had been really fun! Konoka had been so glad when Negi-kun had shown up to go shopping wearing the same sweater that she had chosen for him the other day. She had considered maybe stopping to get him some more clothes with the Dash Cheese logo on them (she loved it, so cute!), but they had spent so much time shopping for other things that she never found the time to drag him off for it.

They really had gone everywhere looking for stuff. Konoka hadn't gone shopping with someone so young before—she couldn't believe she hadn't realized that he was getting tired until he was worn out. She'd cook something tasty tonight to make up for it.

"Ah, well. Fly away, fatigue!" She waved her finger through the air, giving a little spin. Her hand felt warm—like her mother's always did after she did it. She closed her eyes to remember the sensation—it really had been too long.

With her eyes closed, she didn't see the faint shimmer of light flare from her fingertip.

The glow faded as she opened her eyes and smacked her fist into her palm as she remembered what Negi-kun said before. "Ah! I can't believe I forgot! Negi-kun said I could get a card if I kissed him."

The card that Asuna got was just so wonderful! Konoka had never seen that sort of Tarot card of someone before, personalized like that. She sighed at the thought of having one herself, lazily daydreaming of what it would look like. Asuna's had her wielding a sword—well, Konoka hoped hers didn't have that (a sword really fit Asuna, though), but she imagined that hers would look just as incredible. The bad card that she got from kissing Negi's cheek was horrible—she'd have to do it properly for a real one.

She looked down at Negi-kun's sleeping face. An idle thought ran through her mind—_'Why does he need a kiss just to get me a card?_', but was dismissed after only a moment's consideration. Konoka had no idea why he'd need that, but she was sure he had his reasons. He'd tell her if it was important.

As Konoka leaned in close to Negi-kun's face she could see his features with a clarity she had never had before—she had never taken the time to just look at his face. In his sleep, he looked so fragile. Her hair fell around the two of them, blocking the rest of the world from view as she neared his lips.

"Ahahaha! I really can't do it!" Konoka exclaimed as she pulled away from him and rubbed embarrassedly at the back of her head. "I just can't steal a kiss from a sleeping kid."

Crash!

The sound of bodies falling to the ground echoed behind her, causing Konoka to turn her upper body to look at the three girls who stumbled out from behind a bush. "M-Madoka? Kakizaki? Sakurako? What are you doing here?"

The cheerleading trio looked around innocently. "We're… ah… nothing! We aren't doing anything, just, y'know, going shopping with Naruto-kun."

Kakizaki reached into the bush they fell out of. Konoka was surprised to see them pull Naruto-kun out of the bush, leaves and twigs stuck to his hair. "What were you doing in there?"

"Let go!"

"W-well, you see—"

"Hold it right there!" an authoritative voice interjected.

Konoka thought that she needed to do something for everyone—with half the class showing up, she felt almost as though she should be playing hostess for them. Maybe she should at least ask them to keep quiet so Negi-kun could rest.

Well, he'd been resting for a good little while, now. And she supposed there was no way that even a deep sleeper like Negi-kun could stay asleep when so many people were showing up. So when Class Rep and Asuna came jogging up, she instead just greeted them with a simple, "Hello!"

Class Rep stuttered and stammered with a face that was beet red until she managed to stumble upon a working sentence. "You—y-you—K-K-Konoka-san! Cease molesting Negi-sensei with your knees this instant! Making sensei sleep on your lap like that is… is… is totally inappropriate! Unless, you know, he's doing it with me."

Asuna was lightly blushing as she looked at the two of them in bewilderment. "You—so you really are…?"

"Awww… so you found us out, huh?" And they had wanted to keep it secret from her most of all.

Like she expected, Negi-kun began to stir from all the noise. With fresh bedhead he started to push himself up from her lap. "Hmwah? Konoka-san, what…"

He rubbed blurrily at his eyes and settled his glasses onto his nose. Konoka giggled when he gasped upon seeing everyone there. "I'm afraid the cat's out of the bag now, Negi-kun."

"B-b-but we tried so hard to keep it a secret! What do we do?"

"C-cat's out of the bag?" Ayaka repeated weakly, wobbling on her feet. She brought a hand to her forehead and swayed, nearly collapsing into Asuna's arms and dislodging the ermine on her shoulder. "I-I feel faint. Oh, Negi-sensei…"

Konoka and Negi-kun rose to their feet, and she gave her friend a nudge forwards. "Come on, Negi-kun. With all this, there's no point in trying to hide it anymore." He was the one who had come to her with the idea, so it was only right that he should be the one to tell their friends about it.

Negi-kun nodded, taking a steadying breath. He took a step forwards of his own accord to look into Asuna's eyes. "I haven't done this before for anyone other than Nekane-Onēchan and Anya, but I..."

The young boy blushed and glanced down as he held out a bag with both hands. "Happy birthday, Asuna-san!"

There was another resounding crash as three cheerleaders concussed themselves on the ground.

Negi-kun continued speaking, ignoring the comedic background event. "We were going to give it to you tomorrow, so I suppose it's a day early, but since you tracked us down I suppose we can't keep it a secret anymore, right? It would be kind of hard to hide the present from you all the way back to the dorms, and I really wanted to give this to you to thank you for everything! You've done so much for me, and I'm just so grateful that—"

Konoka gave her little roommate a small push and giggled. "You're rambling, Negi-kun." But he was awfully cute when he was all flustered like that. His cousin was really, really lucky.

She gave her other roommate a cheery smile. "We spent all day trying to find this! It was hard, but Negi-kun finally managed to pick out the perfect gift for you. We know how much you like classy, old-fashioned stuff, so we got you a music box!"

Asuna just stared at them and at the gift that was now in her hand.

Class Rep blushed and covered her mouth in embarrassment. "C-come to think of it, it is around that time of year, isn't it?"

"We… uh… we knew that!" Sakurako piped up, a shifty look on her face that Konoka was sure didn't mean anything.

"We got you a whole bunch of presents!" Kakizaki added, stepping forwards to shove boxes and bags into Asuna's arms. "Matching outfits for you and Konoka!"

"And some dumbbells. And…"

The cheerleaders crowded around the not-quite-birthday-girl, bombarding her with piles of presents while Naruto-kun looked on from the sidelines with a strange, unreadable expression on his face.

"Thank you, Negi, Konoka, everyone. This is so sudden, but… I love it. I really, really love it."

Asuna was beaming, her smile and the welling up of tears in her eyes making her look almost delicate. Konoka knew otherwise, of course, but she still went over to hug her.

"So, just to be absolutely sure; you and Negi aren't dating, right?"

"Konoka, you're choking me-blarghflargl…"

"What? No, we're not—eh? Wah! I'm so sorry, Asuna! Please don't die!"

* * *

><p>"So you really thought that we were… um…"<p>

Naruto blushed and looked down. "I didn't really know. I didn't know a teacher and student dating was a problem in the first place, and I'm pretty new here, so I suppose I got caught up in the excitement."

Still, he was glad that it turned out to be nothing. It would be terrible for everyone if Negi lost his job.

He cast a glance towards Madoka, Sakurako, and Kakizaki, who meekly (but not _too_ meekly) followed behind Ayaka as they tried to find a good place for karaoke. The cheerleaders shared embarrassed glances from time to time and didn't speak as they shuffled behind their captor, each sharing a bruise on the top of their heads.

It was a stroke of luck that Ayaka blamed the cheerleaders for dragging him into the whole fiasco. The cheerleaders had given him a couple betrayed glares, but a few sheepish smiles later and he thought that they had reluctantly forgiven him for escaping their punishment. And it was their fault in the first place, so he didn't have much sympathy for them.

Negi was eagerly chatting up Asuna, giving him some time to talk to Konoka. He hadn't really had a chance to speak with her before, but for the last five minutes their conversation had somehow kept turning back to his little gaffe earlier. Which was uncomfortable for the both of them.

Naruto desperately searched for a new topic of conversation as they walked. The line of students ahead of them gave him inspiration. "So Konoka, what is 'karaoke', anyways?"

He imagined it was supposed to be fun since they were going there for Asuna's party, but he really had no idea what that was.

It took him a moment to realize that Konoka wasn't by his side anymore. Naruto paused and pivoted, finding Konoka standing stock still and gazing at him with wide eyes.

"How can you not know what karaoke is?"

_'Good job, Naruto. Nicely done. That was a question I should have given Negi. I need to be more careful about who I ask about this world.'_

"I… uh… I came from a rather small town. We were a long ways away from a city like this, and we didn't have much to do around home," Naruto bluffed, throwing out the first thing that came to mind to try to deflect her attention and sound like someone from this world.

As soon as he said the words, he regretted them. That didn't sound very realistic at all—it was like someone from his own world not hearing about ninja. There were some things that everyone knew, and there were some statements that just sounded cliché.

Fortunately, he was talking to Konoka, so her response was simply, "Ok!" as she stepped spritely alongside him again as they hurried up to the others.

"But that's really awful! I can't imagine never going to karaoke with everyone. What about arcades? Or movie theatres? Or…"

"We did have a theater," Naruto cut in, glad that there was something that their worlds had in common. "My favorites were…"

He trailed off, realizing only belatedly that they wouldn't have any of the same movies here. Naruto hadn't seen many, anyways—he usually had to sneak into a theater to watch something, and he didn't bother for anything other than the Princess Gale movies. And he hadn't even bothered with that in recent years.

"… Adventure films," he finished. Even he could tell that sounded like a forced ending to the sentence, and Naruto winced at how awkward it was. But he was talking to one of the most naïve girls in Mahora, and the countless suspicious flags he was likely sending up were completely ignored.

"Mmhm, those are nice, but I always liked—ah, we're here!" Konoka gave him a smile as the cheerleaders dragged Asuna into a building. "Rather than explaining, maybe you should just watch and see what it is for yourself. It'll be fun, I promise!"

Konoka grabbed his arm and pulled him into the building before he could jerk his arm out of her grip. But she let go as soon as they were in the store, where he could hear Ayaka paying for a room for their 'karaoke'. Naruto rubbed at his arm where she had held it, goosebumps peppering his flesh from their brief contact. He shuddered and brushed his fingertips over his skin as though the motion would rub out the memory of being touched.

The approach of the rest of their party pulled him from his thoughts as he and Konoka stepped in with the group, he trailing slightly behind to watch and listen to his students and co-teacher chatter about everything unimportant under the sun. He didn't really pay attention to what they said, letting their words flow over him in a vaguely comfortable stream of meaningless sound.

They stepped into their room. It was large enough for their group of eight, with a large screen on the wall and what he had learned were called 'microphones' on the table in the middle. The girls eagerly piled into the long couches on each side of the table, leaving a silently grateful Naruto to sit at the end of a couch where he wasn't squished between two people.

"Who should go first?" Sakurako asked, reaching for a black pad with a number of buttons on it. She pointed it towards the screen and pressed one—Naruto was intensely glad no one was looking at him, and thus didn't see him jump when the screen on the wall erupted into light.

Images played across the screen, brighter and clearer and more colorful than anything that Naruto had ever seen before. It was like the world's most perfect movie theater, but a quick look around the room didn't reveal any sort of hidden projector. He could only gape in astonishment at the technological wonder before him, more amazed by the moving pictures before him than he had been by anything else the world had offered him.

Thus did Naruto discover television. If someone had, at that moment, explained computers and the Internet to him, his mind would likely have exploded.

"Asuna, obviously. It's her party, after all," someone said. Naruto wasn't paying attention, his focus still captured by the perfectly rendered images dancing across what he would later know as a TV.

"What? No! You go first! Or better yet, make Ayaka do it—she can screw up in front of all of you, instead."

"Ah, come on Asuna! Everyone sounds horrible at karaoke."

"I don't."

"You're the lead singer in our band! You better not!"

"Then make Kakizaki do it."

"No! You have to be the first one!"

Under the relentless needling of her friends, the twintailed redhead stood up and grabbed one of the microphones and the pad with buttons. "Fine, I'll do it. But so help me, if you laugh I'm going to hurt you."

She poked around with it and the images on the screen changed more, words flashing over its surface until Asuna finally found something she liked. The pictures on the screen changed again.

Asuna took a deep breath and raise the mic to her lips as the first notes of a song sounded throughout the room, almost triumphant in their intensity. The sound was amazing, like an actual band or orchestra was in the room with them, and Naruto was again amazed.

"_There's a longing deep inside of my heart, so filled with passion yet it keeps us apart_…"

It was during these few moments that Naruto learned several important facts—or at least, several facts, which may or may not have been important. Firstly, Asuna had a lovely singing voice. Secondly, he now knew what karaoke was. Thirdly, he saw that as she was singing Asuna was reading the words off of the screen, probably the lyrics. And fourthly, as soon as she was finished singing the rest of the girls had declared that everyone was going to have to take a turn.

And so, as the other cheerleaders pushed Kakizaki into standing up to sing "Fly Me to the Moon," Naruto found himself breaking out in a cold sweat.

He didn't know any of the songs of this world. He recognized maybe a handful of words on the screen. A server came in with a plate of snacks, but Naruto ignored them, his thoughts focused entirely on the enormity of the problem facing him.

There was no way that he would be able to get out of this without his students discovering his illiteracy. Could he pretend to be shy?

It was all Naruto could do not to laugh at how ridiculous that idea was. They were from Class _3-A_! They weren't going to let that stop them—the short time he had spent with them had made that abundantly clear.

No, he needed to think of something. He needed to come up with a plan. He needed…

"I need to go to the restroom. Excuse me for a moment."

Seconds later, he was furiously pacing in the hall outside their room, desperately wracking his brain for an idea that would solve his problem without ruining Asuna's party. Birthdays were important—sometimes, just surviving another year was an accomplishment. He knew that every birthday a shinobi had was a precious moment. It didn't seem like life-and-death situations were something Asuna had faced before, but Naruto still felt that it was important that he didn't mess it up for her.

He had never had a birthday. Even before he knew who his parents were, he had known that they had died the same day he had been born, on the day of the Kyuubi's attack. Who would want to celebrate on such a day? But Asuna had no such shadow looming over her own, and he was determined not to spoil hers for her… even if the party was a day early.

"Seems like you need help, eh?"

Naruto nodded. "I just don't know what to—who said that?" he demanded when he realized that someone else had spoken. There was no one else in the hallway, sending paranoid shivers down Naruto's spine.

"Down here!"

On the bench beside him was a ferret. It was small, white, and furry, with a black-tipped tail, and was wearing a hat. And it was talking.

"You're talking. You're a talking ferret."

The ferret took on a hurt look. "Excuse me? I'm an ermine—an ermine elf, to be precise! A noble fey with standing as high as the cait síth. And you'd do well to remember that too, Mr. Sensei, if you want my help."

He squatted down so he was more on eye level with the rodent. "Do you know a way to let me get out of this?"

The ermine chuckled. "Well, not so much 'get out of' as… well, firstly, let me introduce myself. Albert Chamomile, Lord of Lingerie—or Chamo, as everyone calls me. And of course, Aniki told me all about his assistant teacher. Although really, couldn't you be a bit more shocked to see a talking animal?"

"Well, I haven't seen many myself, but summon animals do know how to talk where I come from."

"Huh. I was hoping to get a bit more of a reaction—seeing non-magical folk respond to me for the first time can be pretty funny. But since that's out of the way shall we cut to the chase? You don't know any songs."

"How astonishing. I had no idea. Thank you so much, Chamo-sama, for telling me that—I don't know what I would have done without your insight."

Chamo shot him an ugly glare. "Hardy har har. Here's what I propose, smartass; I'll sing you one of the songs on their karaoke program (badly, I might add, because I can't sing) so you'll get the lyrics and the melody. When you go up to sing, I'll sit on your shoulder and whisper the words to you if you start to fumble."

Chamo cast a quick glance up and down the hall, then pulled a cigarette and lighter from… somewhere, and flicked it afire. "You'll probably sound pretty awful, but they'll just assume it's because you're a crap singer. Your secret will be safe and sound."

Naruto hid a frown as he looked at the ermine. It sounded like Negi was Chamo's 'Aniki', which would explain why the white-furred critter was so willing to help him. Still, something about the animal's demeanor told him that it wasn't something quite so altruistic as that.

"How much does it cost for you to lend a hand, er—paw? Unless this world is a lot different than mine, everything has a price."

A quiet chuckle came from the littler conversationalist, whose voice was a lot deeper than his size would suggest. "Did you ever think that maybe you're a bit cynical? Don't think so badly of everyone! But… in this case, you happen to be right."

"Hmph. I knew it."

Chamo shot him a hurt stare. "Hey hey hey! It's nothing bad, honest! You'll just owe me a small favor, that's all. And once we get this little unpleasantness dealt with, then we can start the whole 'becoming friends thing' normally, eh? I'm sure we'll be buddies in no time, considering I live with Aniki and all. What do you say?"

It sounded like it would work. Naruto couldn't find a flaw with the idea (although considering how little he knew about this karaoke stuff, that wasn't very surprising), and it sounded simple enough to be effective—complexity was easy to mess up.

Though there was one problem with that… "If you live with Negi, how come I've never met you before?"

"Heh. I watched one of your meetings, but it was so boring I plumb fell asleep in the panty drawer. You must have missed me the other times while I was exploring the very mentionable unmentionables of the rest of Mahora. But that aside—do we have a deal or not?"

He was leery about trusting a rodent, but that wasn't something he imagined Chamo had any control over. Naruto nodded. "It's a deal."

The ermine laughed and tossed his cigarette into a nearby trashbin. He hopped up onto Naruto's shoulder, which he remarkably didn't find uncomfortable; he supposed it was because Chamo was an ermine and not a human. His near-negligible weight settled on Naruto's left side as he spoke.

"Alright then, let's get to work! You, uh, may want to tell the girls you had constipation or something, 'cause this might take a while."

Naruto gave him a flat stare.

"Yeah, maybe a different excuse? It doesn't matter, they'll probably believe whatever you say. But before we start the music, there's something I need to tell you about this class trip."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>

Harajuku is part of the Shibuya district of Tokyo, and Akibahara and Jinbōchō are two other districts of the giant city.

An' omiai' (or simply a 'miai') is an arranged date to consider the possibility of marriage between two people. Before they meet, each side investigates the other to see if they are compatible (the couple's families are typically heavily involved with this process, and usually set up the omiai in the first place). If the first meeting goes well, they have a series of dates, culminating in marriage. Although they are far less popular today than they were even just a couple decades ago, they still exist.

'Dōjin' (or more commonly spelled as "doujin", due to the hiragana spelling and the fact that it is easier to type) is basically a catch-all term for games, manga, music, art, and animation done through independent self-publishing, not as part of a corporation. A lot of it fan-stuff, but a fair amount is 100% original. Quality ranges the entire scale, as does the content rating, so looking through it can be risky, but rewarding. Like trying to find good fanfiction.

(I don't know what I was thinking when I originally said that they bought her a Touhou game. Asuna doesn't have the patience to play those, so I put in a fighting game that was a contemporary release in Japan instead. That's much more her style.)

'Takoyaki' is batter fried or grilled into a small ball and filled with stuffing (typically octopus and some other flavorful things, like onions). The outside then gets sauced.

The lyrics are from an English translation of 1000 Percent Sparking, the opening to Negima?!. I'm going by the manga, not any of the anime (which were weird), but they had some really nice music. Fly Me to the Moon is a lot older (it was actually written in 1954, a decade before Frank Sinatra sang it), but I'm using it here because I love Evangelion.

To clarify, I'm doing the same thing the omnibus is doing in regards to the east/west matter. The West refers to Kansai, which is isolationist and opposed to the occidental mages. The East refers to Kanto, which is open and wants the oriental and occidental mages to be friends. Occident and orient refer to west and east on a global, rather than national, scale. It's annoying, but the distinction is important for the arc.

**Cait Síth**: Also called the "cat sidhe" (or you could switch the words in those two different names around), this is race of spectral fairy cats in Celtic mythology. The cait síth was large and black, with a white spot. It was said to be able to steal the soul from a corpse, or to give blessings to households that treated it well. In a very, very interesting little fact, cait síth are in some myths said to be witches who have transformed into a cat nine times and become stuck in that form, instead of fairies. Chamo compares ermine elves to the cait síth, and ermines are what mages are transformed into as punishment (if this was intentional in the manga, then my love for Ken Akamatsu grew three sizes).

**Ermine Elf**: Ermines are of order Carnivora, not Rodentia. They are often confused for rodents, and Naruto doesn't know any better. Don't yell at me, biology majors! Moving, on, ermine elves don't exist in myth; presumably Akamatsu invented them. Ermines in myths from the British Isles were viewed to be creatures that held family as important, as well as terrible thieves: Chamo calls practically _everyone_ by some sort of sibling term, and the thievery bit is obvious too. To encounter one before a journey is bad luck, but if you greet it as a neighbor then you can avert this. Ermine elves and cait síth are both considered to be low-ranking nobility to the fey; they have bestial forms, but despite this are more human than many other of the fey courts.


	9. Occupied Thinking

Despite a number of Machiavellian schemes and convoluted plots, I have yet to wrest control of Negima and Naruto away from their "rightful owners". This story remains purely fanfiction, and in no way, shape, or form do I own any of the characters used in it. Sadly.

Thanks to Vandenbz for proof-reading, and to Ebony Scales for beta reading and helping me keep the emotions on track.

The title is a song from the Code Geass soundtrack, composed by Nakagawa Kōtarō and Kuroishi Hitomi.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 9:<strong>

**Occupied Thinking**

Sai cast a cautious glance at his compatriot as they travelled ever closer to the border between the Lands of Stone and Fire. He had done so often during their trek, both to assess her combat potential and to reassure himself that she wasn't positioning herself to stab him in the back.

It was a curious balance, to be loyal to Konoha while at the same time opposing the despot that styled himself its rightful ruler. Many ninja of the village would be ready to kill or capture him if they knew his true allegiances, yet even they remained his comrades so long as he considered himself to be a shinobi of the Leaf.

Perhaps it was best if he considered Hanabi to be one of the trained scorpions Sunagakure occasionally fielded. They were useful and dangerous, and quite loyal… but if mishandled they were just as lethal to the one who was trying to deploy them as they were to their enemies.

Sai wondered if Danzō had a taste for irony. The "codename" each operative used on their first real mission was always their true name, their birth name—it was used as a final trimming process, pruning away the last touches of nostalgia that may remain. And if that failed, alerting the head of Root that he needing to do the pruning himself in a decidedly more final and bloody process.

But Root conditioning was strong, and few graves were filled in such a manner. Sai still couldn't remember what his real name was, despite the freedom of thought that he had discovered since Kakashi had taken him in. But that was fine—he liked the sound of what he had now. It was a good name to die with.

"Hanabi-san."

The kunoichi turned her head to look at him—not that she needed to, as her active Byakugan allowed her to see his face perfectly, but it was a tacit acknowledgement that he had spoken and was to continue.

He gave one of those small smiles as they bounded through the trees. "We are only some few days away from fighting Rōshi, and yet I know nothing of how you fight. It would not do to enter battle with such an accomplished foe with no foreknowledge of one another."

Hanabi considered his words for a long moment. Her face was as blank as he would expect from one fresh from Danzō's training. With that fragile frame and pale skin, she looked almost like a doll given some facade of life.

"This is true," she acknowledged in that empty voice of hers. "We could expect a significant drop in combat efficiency if our methods of combat interfered with one another's."

"I am strong in every aspect."

Sai patiently waited several minutes for her to resume, but it soon became apparent that the girl was finished. Her eloquent statement had clearly been intended to explain everything. He coughed. "If you could elaborate…?"

Trees passed by as green-brown blurs in the speed of their passing, though Sai knew that his companion's eyes saw each clearly. "I excel at all ranges. I can handle offense and defense equally. All I require of you is support. This will be my first kill and first actual mission, though I have performed perfectly in all trials until this point."

"My chakra is naturally attuned to wind, though my handlers in Root felt that I was capable of more." Hanabi's words came quietly and calmly, without anything resembling meaning or feeling behind them. "I have mastered water-natured chakra, and have recently succeeded at the introductory stages of lightning nature transformation."

That… was not good. Sai carefully added the faintest of mocking tones to his words as he pried deeper. There had to be a flaw in there somewhere, or real information to exploit. "Truly? I would think that the Jūken's focus on melee attacks would leave you at the disadvantage if your opponent kept at a distance." A flicker of concern darkened his mind. "Or have you moved beyond it to use elemental jutsu as well?"

"It is not possible to 'move beyond the Jūken'." Hanabi retorted, an almost unnoticeable dagger's blade in her gaze. "The Gentle Fist is not described as the perfect style of taijutsu without reason. Not merely as the best, but as perfection. It cannot be improved upon."

"Then training with your element was…?"

"Simply another step towards mastery of the style."

It seemed the girl had some semblance of pride left in her, or perhaps it was simply one of the patterns of emotions she had been taught to mimic—Hanabi's almost-anger at his slight against her art was more feeling than he'd seen from the young agent of Root since they had departed Konohagakure.

Sai admitted to worry. Root wasn't prone to exaggeration, and though he expected a small part of the Hyūga's pride in the style came from at most half-remembered praises from her old life, he had no doubt that her trainers in Root would have excised every last part of that arrogance if some part of it wasn't deserved. She couldn't have been older than ten or eleven, and yet she was already working on a third chakra nature! There were experienced Jōnin who had only a basic grasp on their second.

Everyone had a weakness. Be it a flaw in technique or in their person, there was a point that he could take advantage of. He had known that he would need one early in their travels; she rarely deactivated her all-seeing eye so a sneak attack was impossible, and the method by which she trapped their campground against possible intruders just so happened to provide an effective ward against his own attacks (truly, she possessed an unreasonable fondness for the use of ninja wire).

Truth be told, he had already known how skilled she was before he had ever asked the question. What the dossier Danzō had given him had _not_ mentioned, however, were the faults in the pillar of strength she presented. If they existed, he so far wasn't finding them.

The Konoha rebellion couldn't afford for him to let Hanabi live—but he knew without a doubt that if he tried to fight her, he would die.

"Your own style is dependent upon ink." It was not phrased as a question. Even so, Sai imagined that the same fluid movement that propelled her through the treetops could just as easily push her fingertips through his skin, were he not to treat it like one.

Silently wondering where she had learned about his jutsu, Sai replied, "Yes. I prefer to keep my distance and use chakra constructs to attack, although I am proficient at hand-to-hand."

It was the truth, but not the whole truth. Kakashi may have known little about his techniques, but his vast knowledge of ninjutsu in general and his combat experience certainly made up for that lack. The two of them had moved his skills in directions that his emotionless instructors in Root had lacked the creativity to envision.

What a crude thing his art had been, without feeling. Oh, he kept the style—the elegance of simplicity was more beautiful than any attempt at realism—but he had never seen how lifeless the sketches he had left behind were. All the talent in the world meant nothing if there was no passion to give it meaning.

"We will spar before we cross the border."

Sai could think of reasons to refute her, but none that would matter to a person drained of emotion. He simply nodded.

Perhaps it was for the best that he couldn't kill her yet. The information Root had on the jinchuuriki of the Yonbi was disturbing. Since Rōshi had gone into hermitage he had become increasingly unstable in his rare interactions with other humans.

This wasn't uncommon, for even hosts of weaker demons often grew mad under their prisoner's influence. But Sai had heard of the man from Ibiki's diplomatic trips to Tsuchi no Kuni, and he hadn't heard the man described as violent. It didn't take much to infer that the seal was starting to deteriorate.

A free bijuu was bad news for everyone, but in the Land of Earth? Iwagakure's hatred for the Leaf was old and well known, but even so the rebellion had poured a great sum of resources towards transforming Danzō into a scapegoat for past wrongdoings between their two villages. The plan had born little fruit up until this point, but the Tsuchikage had not reported their cautious attempts at communication to his counterpart in Konoha.

Ibiki had called that a success, and if anyone knew the minds of foreign ninja it would be that man. How curious that the master of interrogation could become one of the most important diplomats the rebels possessed.

If the Yonbi no Saru destroyed its seal, Iwa would be devastated—if not wiped off the map entirely. And another possible ally against Danzō would disappear. Even though it meant keeping a hand on this scorpion, he needed to stay with Hanabi. Though it would be a mercy kill, he certainly had no wish to fight an insane demon host by himself.

She was so small. It was worrisome that someone so young could be so dangerous. Once they defeated Rōshi, he would have to take the opportunity to kill her while she was injured and exhausted. She was too much of a threat to do otherwise, and the bijuu was too dangerous to let Danzō keep.

An acrid burning roiled in his throat as he stared at the child he was planning to murder. Sai silently cursed Kakashi and the feelings his teachings had brought. This would have been much simpler were he able to keep the indifference drilled into him in Root.

Had life dealt a different set of cards, Hanabi could have been heading home from the Academy at this moment to talk and play with her sister. Instead, she was going to kill a monster, and be killed in turn.

Sai didn't need new reasons to hate Danzō, but he found one nonetheless.

Though the conscience his sensei had seen fit to instill in him pricked at his sides, Sai mulled over the few words he had dragged out of the girl. It wasn't much, but something in what she said, or how, or simply her bearing as she spoke, could tell him something about her that he could use against her.

And that was when he realized it.

When a person is surprised, they react—muscles tense and the heart beats faster in instinctive response to the unexpected. It is a physical thing, and something a normal person couldn't control. Certain branches of the shinobi arts did teach such skills, and at that moment Sai wished he had studied those instead of the ways of the scroll.

As it was, he could only desperately hope that Hanabi, whose eyes could peer past flesh to see the reactions playing out within his body, misinterpreted their meaning. She had said something she shouldn't have. Not a secret she should have kept, precisely—rather, it was something a member of Root should never have been able to say.

'_This will be my first kill._'

Danzō had said that she still showed flashes of anger at times. She was young, and had joined Root later than many recruits did—she was obviously only being used now to avoid the incalculably dangerous task of resealing a freed bijuu.

Sai gave one of his small smiles and began to plan.

* * *

><p>Zazie cast a critical eye over Naruto as he straggled into the room. He was muddy and his clothes were covered in leaves and other detritus from his latest jaunt to the woods. He positively reeked, and she jabbed her fingers towards the showers in a demanding motion.<p>

"But I just got back!"

Glare. Point. Pinch her nose for emphasis.

"Fine. I'm going…" the blond muttered dejectedly as he trudged into the restroom.

When she heard the water running, Zazie rose from the couch to the television. Rummaging in a drawer, she pulled out a handful of DVDs, carefully chosen both by popularity and by how interesting she thought Naruto would find them. Tomorrow was the class trip, and Zazie intended for him to spend this entire night watching movies.

She had almost decided to go on the class trip when she heard Chamo explain the possible dangers Negi would be facing as he tried to deliver his letter across the East-West divide. The thought of her friends of the past years going into danger was as terrifying as any nightmare. Zazie admitted that she had panicked a little—but she knew her classmates, perhaps better than they knew themselves, and despite her worry she had faith that they would be safe.

Probably.

In the two days since Asuna's party, Naruto had spent much of his time helping arrange for the trip during the daylight hours, and sneaking off to train once he had completed his responsibilities as a teacher (or successfully foisted them off on Negi).

If one were to ask Zazie how she knew all this about her teacher, she would give them a blank stare and say (if she was in the mood to speak, which she wouldn't be) that she was, of course, stalking him. This should have been immediately obvious to everyone because _how else_ was she supposed to learn about a person whose dreams she couldn't look into?

Of course, no one would actually ask her that, and she would likely never say that much at one time in her entire life. As such, no one would ever be able to suggest to Zazie that she just sit down and try talking with him (which would be a laughable suggestion in the first place).

Ergo, she stalked him.

If there was one thing that Zazie had learned about stalking from romance novels, horror movies, and crime novels, it was that watching people sleep was very important (as a demon that peered into dreams, this was something that Zazie already had a great deal of experience with). When she wasn't doing what she could to make Naruto's sleep more comfortable, she collected notes on him in order to crack open his secrets.

She had, after nights of sitting by his side, determined the source behind the dichotomy of draw and repulsion Zazie felt from him. It was youki—she couldn't feel it, not properly, but her own reacted to it nonetheless on an instinctive level. There was a basic, primal need to draw closer to Naruto, like a moth drawn to flame: yet even so, the most deep-seated reaches of her consciousness told her to flee from his presence.

It was an experience so far divorced from the simple recognition of nearby youki that Zazie was used to that comparing the two seemed counterintuitive, yet the answer she had dreamed of rung true to her. The very thought of what vastness and density of power would be needed to evoke such an effect was terrifying. She doubted such power could be Naruto's; no, for that the only suspect she could find was the beast that rested within him.

Zazie shuddered at the memory of her brush against the creature, if it could even be called that.

The sound of the door opening pulled her from her thoughts before she could dwell further on the matter. Had Zazie been the emotive sort she would have kissed Naruto for that.

The blond in question looked around the room, now clean and dressed in cleaner clothes—one of the pairs that he had obtained during the shopping-trip-turned-stalking-turned-karaoke-turned-shopping-trip-again.

"What are you doing crouched in front of that?" he asked.

"…" Zazie answered, turning back to the disks in front of her. She pulled one from its case and slid it into the DVD player, flicking the television to life in the process.

"_A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…_"

Naruto kept standing in silence while flashes of green and red filled the screen. By the time two droids landed on a lonely desert planet, he was sitting wide-eyed on the edge of the couch.

As entertaining as it was to stare at someone as they slept, Naruto wouldn't get any rest tonight—not if her film collection had anything to say about it.

Zazie was a demon, and it had crossed her mind that if the being within Naruto had possessed youki (though so vast, so dense, so corrosive, that it was hardly similar to hers at all) then it may have recognized her as such. It was her hope that the monster inside him wasn't eager to reveal itself to the world at large, and that it wouldn't tear apart his body in front of one that wasn't demonic themselves.

It wasn't much more than that—a hope, a fleeting idea that might work, a hunch that had some slight logic behind it. But the sight of him staining the bed crimson, torn by invisible tortures was… too much. If she could do something to help, even if it was only something as small as this, then she had to.

During the trip Naruto would be rooming up with Negi, and if he didn't sleep tonight he would likely fall asleep on the train. If she was right, then the demon wouldn't bleed him at all during the field trip.

Zazie would call Ayaka the day after the trip. If Naruto did erupt into blood during the trip, the class representative would tell her as soon as she called.

She sat back as two droids and a boy met, and desperately wished she was better at allaying her own fears.

* * *

><p>April 23, 2003. Wednesday morning, 5:29:05<p>

April 23, 2003. Wednesday morning, 5:29:27

Sweat dripped down Negi's face as he stared at the clock, his focus and concentration narrowed solely upon the ticking of the arms lethargically moving across its face. He was quite certain that time was slowing down the seconds passed—surely several minutes had already passed over what the clock claimed was mere seconds?

April 23, 2003. Wednesday morning, 5:29:58

April 23, 2003. Wednesday morning, 5:29:59

This was torture. It was the most painful thing he had ever endured in his life. He had no idea how Asuna could lie there beside him and just sleep through this terrible, terrible agony. Negi wanted to scream, but slowly the clock ticked a final time and

RR-SMASH

The alarm rung for less than a second before he slapped his hand over it, prompting Asuna to let out a surprised scream. "Good morning!" he greeted his roommates as he flung himself out of the bed and set about preparing for the dawn.

"Today's the big day! It's the field trip!"

Negi laughed as he dressed himself—of course they knew that, everyone knew that because _today was the field trip_. He rummaged about the room until he rooted out his backpack and staff and slid them on. "Good morning Asuna-san, Konoka-san! Are you excited? It starts today and we can't be late!"

There was a heavy groan from the top bunk of the double bed that Negi had just left. Thick blankets shifted. "I'll rise, but I refuse to shine. Why do you have to be so noisy? Lemme sleep some more…"

Despite her complaining, Asuna struggled upright with a yawn. Negi was, as always, struck by how different she looked when her hair wasn't tied up with those bells of hers; she was almost a different girl entirely.

"Hmmmyaawwn~ Don't complain so much, Asuna," Konoka mumbled as she rose from the bottom bed, dressed in her own pajamas. "But you do seem awfully excited, Negi-kun."

"He just wants to get ready for the trip, that's all."

Negi rolled his eyes. "Well of course I do, Naruto-san! And we sensei do have to be there early, after all."

"I told you, no honorifics!"

Asuna, who was in the process of climbing down from her bed, froze. "Wait, you do? That means I can sleep in longer, right?"

"You might as well stay up, Asuna. I'm making onigiri for breakfast, and I know how much you love rice balls."

Naruto looked exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes as he sat at their table, but he perked up a little at the mention of food. He looked at Negi—well, a little bit to the side of him, like he was having trouble focusing. "Hey, Negi, we can stay long enough to eat, right? I'm been up all night and I'm starving."

Negi's own stomach demanded attention. "I think that's a good idea, Naruto-san." Naruto glared at him, forcing Negi to look away.

He wasn't a native speaker of Japanese, but Negi was proud to say that he had picked up their language and culture very well—enough, at least, to feel as uncomfortable doing something impolite in Japan as he would in Britain. His cousin had always taught him how important it was to be a proper British gentleman.

That politeness wasn't something that stayed behind when he spoke in a different tongue. Negi looked Naruto in the eye, trying to find the right words. "I'm sorry, but using yobisute feels too rude to me—I just haven't known you long enough to drop the honorifics, it wouldn't feel courteous. But if you really don't like it… would 'Naruto-kun' work?"

Naruto gave him a sleepy stare. Then he laughed. "Jeez, you're so uptight. Yeah, that works. Just don't be so formal all the time."

The tiredness of morning took further words away from them as Asuna sat down at the table. Naruto's head nodded forwards, and he slowly leaned until he was almost lying down on the wooden surface. Konoka hummed happily to herself as she put the finishing touches on their breakfast. A curious thought crossed Negi's mind in the humdrum.

"Naruto-kun… what are you doing in our room?"

Konoka paused in her cooking to look at Naruto, and Asuna leveled a half-hearted, sleepy stare in his general direction. Naruto looked too tired to be nervous about their attention.

"Movies."

"Could… could you run that by me again?"

"Zazie showed me all her films, all night long. It was _so beautiful_," Naruto whispered with glazed eyes. "But by the time we finished there was only forty minutes or so until we had to get there, and if I fell asleep there was no way I'd be able to get up in time. So I came here."

"While we were asleep."

"Yes."

"And you waited."

"Yes."

"…"

"…"

Konoka shook her head as she approached the table. "Naruto-kun, that's a… um… could you please refrain from waiting _in_ our room in the future? It's just a little creepy."

To take the bite from her words she reached out to ruffle Naruto's hair, as she had done to Negi many times before. But the other boy recoiled at her touch—something that he had seen all too frequently since Naruto had come here. Negi opened his mouth to ask about it, but a vague insight held his tongue. He didn't understand the cause, but he doubted it was something Naruto would want to talk about over breakfast.

Konoka, however, apparently hadn't seen it before. Her eyes widened in confusion and she stepped back. She stared at her hand as though it had betrayed her before slipping the traitorous appendage behind her back, an uncertain hurt upon her face.

"O-Oh. I-I'm so sorry, Naruto-kun!" Konoka said, giving him a strained smile. She pulled a tray of food from the counter and set it on the table. "Um, onigiri anyone?"

The food soothed the awkward silence that followed, turning what could have been painful into something that was merely mildly unpleasant.

Delicious rice balls could only stave off the inevitable for so long, and soon enough Negi and Naruto found themselves needing to leave in order to fulfill their duties. Asuna ambushed them before they could get out the door, grabbing Negi by the backpack to hold him in place while she fussed over him.

"You combed, right? And you packed your toothbrush?"

"Yes, I—"

"What about your passport? Your insurance? The travel guide?"

Negi rolled his eyes. "Yes, I—"

"And clothes, you made sure to pack extra? What about your und—"

"Wellthatwasfunbutwegottagoby e!"

And so Negi and Naruto fled from the terrible force that was the Overly Protective Roommate (a figure remarkably similar to the Overly Protective Cousin. Well, they smelled the same). They slowed to a walk once they got outside of the dorms, and proceeded to head towards the train station that would take them to the school proper where they were meeting up with the other teachers.

Negi was usually very careful to never ever be up so early. But now that he was, he couldn't help but admire the sight—the sun had only barely breached the tips of the hills that surrounded the city-school, and the multihued light of the dawn reflected the surface of Mahora Lake. The reds and oranges and purples of the rising sun danced upon the branches of the giant World Tree, its innate magic giving brief life to the light of the dawn, just long enough to create brief and ephemeral images that faded as soon as one thought they might exist.

Naruto yawned.

"Negi, I have a question. Asuna asked you about a 'passport' and 'insurance', but what are those? Do I need them?"

It was a scene that had repeated many times since Naruto had come to him for help learning to read—when he found something he didn't understand, he bluffed his way past whatever situation he was in until he could ask Negi about it.

"You remembered to bring all the papers the Headmaster gave to you, right?"

"Of course I did! You did tell me to, after all. Are they in there?"

The young mage nodded. "Specifically, the passport was the red booklet with your picture on the inside. It has important identifying information in it. The only insurance you carry with you was that one card. Because most people don't know about either the Magical World or the Demon's World, the magical community has come up with a number of ways to create identities for those who wish to travel to or live in Mundus Vetus."

That was an incredibly rushed description, but it was enough to allay Naruto's curiosity for the moment. Negi would need to set some time aside to explain the different documents, forms, and cards in more depth to Naruto later, though—it was nearly impossible in the modern day to do much without showing any of a half-dozen or more different types of identification.

They strode together down the open street towards the station. His thoughts already pulled back to the breakfast they had shared by Naruto's question, Negi knew he had to confront the issue that he had seen repeated over Naruto's stay in Mahora.

"I need you to tell me something."

The other boy gave him a questioning look. "Hm?"

"Why must you always pull away when someone touches you?"

Naruto froze midstride. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I've seen you do it over and over," Negi pressed, "and this morning with Konoka was only the most recent. She looked pretty upset over it."

"I think you're exaggerating things." Stone was warmer and more emotive than his face.

"Don't blow this off, Naruto-kun! It can't be healthy for you to keep away from other people like that, and if you always avoid touching then someone could get feel hurt from the misunderstanding—especially in someplace as physical as 3-A."

_That_ sparked a reaction. Naruto glared at him, his eyes flashing with more emotions than Negi could track—anger and fear and pain and pride, interposed with some that he simply couldn't recognize. "Take that _back_! I didn't hurt them—I never did and I never will. Not my students and not the villagers!"

"Then talk to me!" Negi pleaded. He paused as what Naruto had said percolated through his head. "What villagers? I didn't say anything about…"

"Th-the villagers have nothing to do with this!"

"But you said—"

"Shut up! I don't need help, because there isn't a problem. There's nothing wrong with me!"

"I-I'm not saying… Naruto-kun, please! You don't have to do this to yourself; haven't you been here long enough to trust us? It doesn't matter what happened to you back in—"

"Just. Shut. _Up_!"

The teacher took a step away from the sheer force of Naruto's growl and the fury in his eyes. The other boy stood poised on the tips of his feet, clenching and unclenching his fists, his teeth bared with a snarl building behind them, overall presenting Negi with the most uncomfortable comparison of a predator on the verge of biting.

"I'll meet up with you at the old man's office. Bye."

Or fleeing. That worked too.

Negi considered himself to be quick—his specialization in wind magic let him run as fast as the idiom said he should. But after chasing Naruto over the rooftops of the city for only a minute, the blond simply… disappeared.

Still, he kept looking. He had upset his friend, and he needed to apologize and find some other way to help. Somehow. He doubted he'd have the time to do much during the trip.

* * *

><p>Naruto arrived early at Miya Station. It was larger than the smaller stations scattered throughout Mahora, which was reasonable considering that it was the only one featuring the inter-city bullet trains. Even as tired as he was and occupied as he had been with avoiding Negi, he had paid attention to the little cultural tidbits the Headmaster had thrown in during the faculty meeting that morning (for his benefit, Naruto assumed. It was nice of him).<p>

Negi had been fast, he had to give him that. Naruto might have been able to outrun him—maybe—but he had wanted to get away and to be alone, not to let Negi chase him down later. As soon as he had a second's opening he had dropped under the eave of a roof, clinging there with his chakra as the mage rushed by.

He did _not_ have a problem. Negi was trying to butt his head into someplace he had no business being.

He let himself fall the two stories to the ground after Negi was long gone and found his own way to the meeting, which was predictably boring. But he had managed to stay awake through it somehow, which considering how little sleep he got last night was no mean feat. He was lucky in that the Headmaster wanted to speak to each of the teachers privately at the end of the meeting, and Naruto was the first one chosen—which was surprisingly short as the old man had mostly just repeated what that ermine had told him days earlier. When he left (and dodged Negi's questions again), he had headed straight over to Miya Station.

Despite the lengthy wait until the five classes were actually going to board the train, there were already a number of students at the station, seemingly content to kill time until they were ready to leave (or content to complain about it, from the racket they were making).

They clung together in small clusters, which even he could see were grouped by class. Naruto homed in upon the nearest batch of recognizable faces and slipped into their little crowd.

"Morning. Looking forward to the trip?"

"AH! N-N-Neg… oh. It's just—I, I mean: Good morning, Naruto-sensei."

The petite girl that leapt away from him, then blushed profusely and bowed, was obviously the legendarily shy Nodoka. If he hadn't already been told she was a bookworm, he might have been able to guess from what was threatening to burst out of her overfull backpack. Her face was almost completely hidden by purple hair, cracked open just enough for a single eye to meekly peek out at the world.

The almost ever-present companion to the librarian raised her box of juice towards her teacher in greeting. "If we weren't I don't see why we'd be here this early. Hello sensei." The very ends of her long mane of slightly-bluer-than-Nodoka's-but-still-purple hair (Naruto suddenly and irrationally wished he had Negi's vocabulary) were bound into two small puffs, while short twin braids fell down her chest.

Each was dressed in their school uniforms, as until free activity day came around it was a school function and the dress code had to be maintained. Unlike the other students, however, the two girls held pillows in their arms.

"Ahaha… right." Naruto rubbed at the back of his head in embarrassment. It was a wonder he had any hair left back there. "I suppose that was a stupid question. Alright then, what are you looking forward to?"

Yue took another sip from her drink. "Well, there's a lot of history in Nara and Kyoto. I'd love to actually see that in person, so I think I'll try to go to the shrines and temples—they're pretty much standard tourist hotspots, but they became that way for a reason. You know, Tōdai-ji originally had two pagodas that were a hundred meters tall when the temple complex was built in the 8th century—at the time, Tōdai-ji would have been the second largest structure in the world, next to the Pyramids of Giza. That's gone, but there's still so much else to see."

"I… well, I think I'd just like to spend time with… um, somebody."

The shy librarian squeaked and ducked behind Yue when Naruto gave her a look. "You're going on a field trip, and all you want to do is spend time with people you already spend time with every day?"

Yue patted Nodoka on the head. "That's because when she says 'somebody', the only person she's really talking about is Negi-sensei."

"Y-YUE!"

"Well, you do, don't you? This is a field trip! You can't let this chance go by without confessing to him. I won't allow it." She sounded mildly impassioned about it—despite what she said, her tone of voice was mellow and her face didn't change its sleepy, lazy cast.

Nodoka ducked her head as she fidgeted with her fingers, her visible eye almost completely disappearing behind her hair. She was very quiet as she whispered, "Doesn't that seem a little… I don't know… forward? Spending time with him on free activity day would be enough to make me happy."

Yue looked her friend in the eye, obviously trying to convey some message to Nodoka. "You can't do that. If you just stand around and never act on your feelings, you might as well not have any. I thought what you felt for Negi-sensei meant more to you than that."

"Th-they do!"

Yue placed a hand on her girl friend's shoulder. "Then tell me why you should confess to him, not why you shouldn't."

"Huh? Well, I'll try to, but—"

Naruto looked at Nodoka with wide eyes. "C-confess? To Negi?" Hadn't he just dealt with this romantic nonsense the other day? Getting involved with a student would get Negi kicked out of Mahora. But rather than a false alarm, this time he was faced by a student who actually had the capacity to destroy his life.

If Negi got fired he could go back home to Wales—but Naruto would be left alone in this city, and that would ruin him—there's no way he could manage the job by himself, and he doubted he'd be able to find another place so welcoming anywhere else. A chill ran down his spine at the very thought of it.

After everything that had happened, he didn't want to go back to living as he had before coming here.

Spurred by the risk of losing what he'd managed to obtain in this world, Naruto spoke up to try to reason with her. But Nodoka, blushing a color of red normally reserved for holiday decorations and with a newfound spark in her eye, began talking before he said so much as a word.

"Well, I suppose so. I-I mean, I know so. I suppose it sounds strange, but the more I learn about him and the more time I spend with him, the more it makes me happy just to know him."

"You know, sometimes he acts like a child, and he really is adorable! It's heartwarming to see him behave like that, and I'm always glad when he does. Because… most of the time, he doesn't. When I look at him, it isn't like looking at a kid."

"Can you see his eyes?" Nodoka continued, her voice enraptured by the image she wove for herself. "He gets this… this look in them, and you know that he's someone you can count on—seeming more like an adult than any sort of child. Sometimes I wonder if he isn't actually older than we are."

Nodoka pulled the pillow she held to her almost nonexistent breast as though it were the boy in question. She held it tenderly as spoke. "I think he has a goal, something that drives him. Something that we… just don't have, and he's always trying to move forwards to achieve it. Just being around him makes me feel alive, and when I watch him I feel like I can be better, a braver person. Just a little bit."

"B-but! Th-that's only what I think, that doesn't really mean anything," she protested, waving her hands as though the motion would fan away the heat that had begun rising from her cheeks the moment her monologue had slowed.

Yue nodded sagely. "It doesn't mean anything at all. You can obviously tell that she didn't put any thought into her feelings, and hasn't in any way considered why she likes him."

"Th-that's not true!"

A sigh. "I know that. I was being sarcastic, Nodoka." Her lips moved upwards slightly. "That was good, Nodoka. Just keep that in mind for tomorrow and you'll be all set."

"R-really?"

"Well… maybe if pulled your hair back a bit more you would be. But I don't know if Japan is ready for a Miyazaki Nodoka with _two_ eyes visible to the world."

The two friends laughed, falling into the routine of two people who had known one another for an age. Naruto held his silence, feeling abruptly disconnected from them as the words of the librarian soaked into his mind. She poked at Yue, who delivered some short rant on a matter of trivial import. They laughed again, blithely unaware of the blow they had struck.

_Naruto had no idea what to do_.

Had he not, mere seconds ago, intended to put a stop to such romantic delusions before they cost him his livelihood on Earth? But before what Nodoka had laid before him, such purposes fell flat. Would he—could he—take away such purity of feeling for his own purposes? Of course he could. He needed to, or else he'd be eating out of dumpsters again.

Ice gathered in his gut, thick and heavy. The girls asked him a question, though he didn't hear a word of it. He plastered a smile on his face (he was good at that, it was easy and didn't make his hands shake) and gave a noncommittal answer—but that wasn't enough for the earnest Nodoka, who pushed a book into his hands and extracted a promise to read it when he got the chance. He took the opportunity to leave, unable to bear their presence.

Naruto withdrew from the group to watch over his students from afar. The cold spread. He said nothing, didn't even approach them again.

'_When I watch him, I feel like I can be better, a braver person. Just a little bit._'

The chill deepened to such an extent that Naruto had to choke down the wave of nausea that followed. He brought his hands (why wouldn't they stop _shaking_?) up to rub at the goosebumps peppering his arms, but it didn't help in the least.

Negi arrived, which Naruto knew meant the time to depart was soon. He reluctantly merged briefly with the crowd before appearing at its head alongside the other teachers, while Negi worked his way through the students and greeted them with that easy familiarity of his. When the other boy approached, Naruto turned to the woman beside him.

He could only imagine what it was Negi intended to do now. Naruto supposed his fellow teacher intended to talk more, to try to pry further into matters he had no intention to air. To try to 'fix' him.

It wasn't something that needed to be corrected. Perhaps he didn't like to be touched, but so did a lot of other people, people who didn't have an abomination against reality crawling underneath their skin and whispering into their nightmares.

Negi was blowing the issue out of proportion—he wasn't going to just let himself hurt his students! He hadn't hurt someone on accident like that, ever. His hands clenched again into fists, and the growing heat was enough to thaw the ice that was eating at his stomach.

"Shi—er, Shizuna-sensei, isn't it about time we readied to board the train?" Naruto asked before Negi could say anything to him. He barely remembered to use the honorific in time, but he didn't want to get reprimanded right now.

They had a couple more minutes left, from Naruto's reckoning (though he still hadn't quite gotten the hang of the strange clocks here), but the motherly teacher nodded and favored him with a smile. "Thank you for being so responsible, Naruto-kun."

She cupped her hand around her mouth so that when she called out her voice reached over the chattering teenagers. "Alright classes, this is it! Everyone going to Kyoto—3-A, 3-D, 3-H, 3-J, and 3-S, sort into your groups and come on! Once you've taken roll, we'll be moving onto the platform for the train."

Negi took a step towards him, which Naruto answered with a shake of his head and a glance towards the dividing crowd. The bespectacled boy understood what he had done instantly and shot him a glower. But he had to attend his duties as a sensei now and couldn't spare the time to speak with Naruto, though his face promised that they would later.

"Class 3-A with me! Please split up into Groups One through Six."

If the students took note of the two sensei's distance, they didn't show it. As loud and boisterous as ever, Class 3-A split up into its groups with little fuss… well, that was a lie. But they did eventually convince the twins that they couldn't ride on top of the bullet train ("But we missed Asuna's party!") and forced them into the vehicle itself along with the rest of Group One.

Of course, Group Two got bogged down selling their meat buns, and Negi nearly got kidnapped in the next group when Ayaka tried to cart him off to a private room on the train. Someone-whose-name-he-was-too-tired-to-remember nearly got sick in Group Four worrying about the trip (she was, ironically enough, also the nurse's assistant).

The final group, though… Asuna and Konoka spoke, asked questions about how their day had been, but he didn't pay attention. Naruto's hearing, so unfortunately beyond a normal human's, could easily make out the whispered conversation between Yue, Nodoka, and the friend that had joined them. So he clearly heard them try to push the shy girl into acting upon her feelings, heard quiet words of love and dates and the possibilities of free activity days.

And a cold and sickening weight again dropped into the pit of his stomach. His grin cracked, but didn't fall. There was nothing wrong.

"Well, that's that. We should… wait. That was only five groups. Where's Group Six?"

A single girl stepped forward. Her skin was astonishingly pale, a mere shade away from white. It provided a pointed contrast to her dark eyes and crow-black hair, which was pulled into a spiky ponytail on the left side of her head; on the other, the strands that couldn't reach across fell freely. Slung over her back along with her satchel was a long, narrow object wrapped in a thin blanket.

Her eyes were sharp and alert, yet when she looked over him Naruto had the curious feeling of being dismissed as unimportant. "I'm afraid, Negi-sensei, Naruto-sensei, that there is only me. The others of my group are absent."

"Ah! That's right, I remember Chachamaru stopping by earlier to… to…" What was he saying again? Naruto choked back a yawn as he tried to complete his sentence. "To explain that she and Evangeline couldn't make it, and why. I was pretty tired then, though, and didn't pay much attention."

The yawn forced its way through then, and he missed Negi placing the girl ("Sakurazaki Setsuna, right? Number 15?") in Group Five. But he couldn't miss Konoka's reaction—especially with how the bespectacled boy had tried to use her against him earlier.

The sun shone less than her beaming face. "Isn't it nice, Set-chan?" came her warm and quietly eager voice, "we're in the same group again!"

Damn Negi. Damn him to hell.

Because, thoughts of the morning fresh on his mind, he saw clearly Konoka's face as Setsuna silently bowed and walked away. Saw her smile fall and her eyes begin to water, and reach out towards the retreating girl with a hand, only to pull it back. But she didn't cry, only stared at her hand for a long moment before slipping it behind her back. But the hurt on her face was written out in words even he could read.

"Ehehe. Sorry about that. You'd think I'd be used to—never mind. We… we should go find our seats."

Naruto wouldn't later be able to recall the first leg of the trip. Gentle reverberations and soothing vibrations cushioned him as surely as did the seats he sat in, shaking his thoughts apart as soon as they formed. Absent shape and meaning, the looming emotions that had dominated the last hours simply drifted, formless and unpleasant, across his mind.

But they arrived at the Tokyo station in less than half an hour, and Naruto would never let his students know how grateful he was for that. He moved through the station in a daze, hardly aware of his surroundings, but somehow he and his class managed to get into the next train within the ten minute window before it left.

The trip to Kyoto, however, was a full two and a half hours, and despite splashing cold water on his face Naruto found himself again lulled nearly to sleep. The ceaseless speech of the girls swirled together into a meaningless buzz, a wordless lullaby, and the movement of the vehicle rocked him ever closer to slumber.

He fought it, struggling to stay awake against the slow and inexorable pressure to rest his eyes. The spike of fear at the thought of falling asleep in front of everyone was enough to prompt his mind back to a semblance of wakefulness. Sleeping in the same room as Zazie was bad enough, even though he was careful to wait until after she went to bed before letting himself rest. But everyone in the room—all awake—watching him sleep?

The thought by itself was disturbing enough, but that they could see what happened to him when he fell asleep… that they could see his nightmares played out upon his flesh…

He couldn't fall asleep. He _couldn't_. But Naruto's body had demands of its own, and regardless of his intentions it would not be deterred for long. Against his will his mind drifted and the fog of sleep settled onto him.

Shuddering with the force of crumbling mountains, that which could only in the vaguest of terms be called a 'voice' resounded through Naruto's head.

[_**FOUL KEEPER OF THE SEAL, WE SHALL SPEAK****.**_]

And Naruto fell past the mists of thought and dream, into darkness.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>

And with that, the Kyoto Arc has begun.

Smallcaps aren't available on this site. I wanted to use those instead of all caps, but...

Nodoka with only one eye visible is the cutest Nodoka. I know that exposing her face is important and symbolizes her developing courage, but for now it's just so damn adorable!

Onigiri is, of course, sticky rice clumped together into a ball or triangle (usually), often partially wrapped in seaweed. It's sometimes stuffed with something to give it more flavor. They are pretty tasty. 4Kids Entertainment doesn't quite seem to grasp that they exist (*cough* donuts *cough*). That last sentence had nothing to do with Negima.

Tōdai-ji is the name of the temple complex where Nodoka and Negi go to visit the big Buddha statue. It's a huge national treasure of Japan—it's filled with ancient and priceless antiques. It's quite impressive, and very beautiful.

Honorifics—this is something that just about everyone in this section of ought to know a lot about by now. Still, a bit more about them (because I like explaining things, damn it); "-kun" isn't solely used for boys: it can also be affectionately used for young girls by, say, teachers (Takahata does this); "-chan" can also be used for young children of any gender (or just to be cute, or to show closeness between a couple). Using "yobisute", or not using an honorific at all, implies a strong friendship or a lot of familiarity, and can often be fairly rude. "-dono", like "-sama", refers to someone of high station, but it does _not_ imply a lower station on the part of the speaker (and thus is used as a statement of respect between equals).

**Jūken**: The good old Gentle Fist. It's surprising how many different ways you'll see the word spelled on this website. Some things have come up in the story that I haven't explained in my author's notes, not fully. That's because they'll show up in the story itself. So, on the subject of the Jūken, for now let me simply say that Hanabi overestimates its power.

But not by much.


	10. You Can't Escape

This is a work of fanfiction. I make no claims to own any of the characters or settings used. Although today is my birthday, so it would make an amazing present.

My thanks to those reviewers who I wasn't able to respond to due to anonymous comments or disabled private messaging.

The title comes from the freeware game Eversion. "You Can't Escape (World -8)" composed by Matthew Steele, Miroslav Malesevic, and others.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 10:<strong>

**You Can't Escape**

_Drip_.

Shadows danced on the edges of Naruto's vision, flickering in silent laughter. Droplets of liquid—at once black as pitch and transparent as water—fell from the vast array of pipes in his mindscape. No matter how many rained down from the metal pipelines, their splashes had no voice—there was only one sound, that of a single drop of the black fluid.

_Drip_.

The noise seemed unbearably loud in the quiet of his mind. That sound had heralded his first visit to this place. Every few moments it repeated, echoing through the dark corridors.

Naruto floated in the ebon water. It wasn't water of course. This was thicker, cloying, clinging, and it moved with—

He stopped thinking about it, a knee-jerk reaction to avoid something his mind knew better than to dwell on. 'Water' was a good enough term as any for it. It was safer.

_Drip_.

Placing the precise moment he entered his mindscape was impossible. Or at least, the moment he became aware he was in his mind. How long had he drifted on the motionless surface before this? Time lost meaning here, and whatever exhaustion he had felt had slid away when he fell into this prison.

The boy rose to his feet, liquid pouring off of him like too much ink. The gentle waves of his movements splashed against the corridors, but the water falling from him was disturbingly silent.

Naruto had never been comfortable with what the state of his mind said about him. Though it lacked the reek of human waste, it was undeniably a sewer. Was it the undeniable proof that he truly was as disgusting as the people of Konoha had thought him to be, or had the demon twisted its environs to suit its dismal temperament? He was afraid to discover the truth, so had never asked.

There was an ominous sensation of being watched as he wandered aimlessly down the dim passageways. There were no eyes—not eyes that he could perceive, at least—yet as his paranoia rose, every dark corner seemed to gain a new and fearsome mien. His mind was empty—it always had been—yet even so the unseen awareness bearing down upon him and the darkness that clouded his sight made irrational fears seem all too reasonable.

It didn't matter what direction he went. At every fork he took a random path. It didn't matter if the corridors crossed over one another, or even if he went down straight tunnels. Every direction had the same destination, and after some great length of time—there was no way for him to him to tell how long had passed in this place—he had arrived at the only 'location' that he had ever discovered here. Dripping water became irrelevant.

Darkness shifted and seethed as though it were a living thing as Naruto stepped into the room, and an entity ancient beyond the counting of mortal man stirred within its prison.

No sooner had the demon host crossed the threshold than he stood directly before the cage, for space and distance had no meaning in this place. Before the bars of the cell he was less than a mote in size, and their vastness rose endlessly upwards towards a ceiling that Naruto had never seen. Chains—some as great in girth as the bars themselves, others as fine as woven hair—wove across its surface like a great web. And at the center of it all lay the deceptively simple seal.

But yet that seal did nothing to ward away the haunts that assaulted him. Whispers that weren't echoed about his ears even as _things_ in the not-water rasped against his legs.

So foul and blasphemous—not to any faith, but to life itself—were the words that his mind rebelled against and refused to understand their cruel murmurings. The content of those that pierced through the veil of ignorance were horrible enough on their own. "_Sing, O' jailor. Sing praises_," they would croon in hushed tones as though afraid to be heard in full, "_to the song of hate. Bleed onto the world and unleash the defiler's majesty…_"

There was more, words so foul that they were seared into his brain despite his defensive incomprehension, but before the presence of the beast even that was of little consequence. Naruto swallowed; his mouth dry and the terror that had been mounting since he awoke in the sewer reaching its peak.

"You… you can't do this. Not now. Not in front of everyone. Please …"

His pleading was weak and empty, and he knew it. It was pointless as well, for it was not possible to deter the being that was 'jailed' within him.

Malevolent red eyes appeared behind the bars, the rest of the Kyuubi's form thankfully concealed by the pervasive gloom. Yet the weight of its gaze was enough.

A terrible malice pressed down upon Naruto, crawling over his skin and scalding him, forcing him to cry out as he writhed under the demon's attentions. It was hate, but it surpassed that expressed by mortals in the sense that the fires of creation surpassed a candle; unmitigated loathing, befouled by the passing of countless aeons into something that so utterly eclipsed contempt that there could be no true comparison.

Were he any other than its warden, he would have died and worse under the force of that hatred alone, the venomous force of it enough to destroy simply by virtue of its existence. But Naruto was tainted by it, and had been thus stained since the day he was born, soaked in the filth of the Kyuubi no Youko's unending hate.

Naruto fell into the black liquid, which formed clawed hands to clench and hold at him. His convulsions tore them apart, the slightest movements breaking them. Horrified, he tried to rise to his feet to escape from their touch, yet the force of the demon's gaze weighed down upon him with a physical presence, pushing him down into the water where he choked on the viscous fluid.

Deep rumbling such as to vibrate every bone in Naruto's body sounded through the chamber as the demon growled. Impossibly immense thoughts brushed against his own, torrents of concepts and images beyond reckoning crushing him. A single idea was overwhelming, a force surpassing comprehension, and he could but whimper as his psyche began to succumb to the crushing pressure.

Yet under the demon's skilled and cruel ministrations, fragments of fragments of fragments of concepts broke apart and tore into Naruto, the Kyuubi's preferred modus operandi of communicating with his host. What it 'said' did not in any way resemble words, calling instead upon grand and terrible perceptions from such an abyss of time that the bewhiskered boy could only recoil from in primal dread.

Mortal minds weren't meant to hold such thoughts. His own skittered desperately at the edges of the intrusion in an attempt to understand the foreign presence, trying to piece together comprehension from the unknowable. Even that weakest of shards was beyond him, yet even so the nature of sentience was such that Naruto could not help but try to see patterns within it.

As the Kyuubi intended, Naruto found words—or rather, clumsily imposed words upon it in a wild and frantic attempt to apply meaning to that which surpassed meaning. And the only cost to Naruto was pain.

[**_HOW ARROGANT, TO DEMAND OF ME_**.]

He gasped for breath as the air grew thick. The fox's growling filled the intervening space between them, the sound twisting and turning and laughing at him, mocking his plight and his helplessness before the force of un-nature that was Kyuubi no Youko. The noises swirled around him, incomprehensible susurrations coalescing into fingers and teeth and _eyes_. He could hear them staring at him, and the feel of their touch against his body was the sensation of ear-piercing shrieks.

[_****_I CAN FEEL YOUR HATE AND YOUR ANGER. SWIRLING UNDER FEAR, YOUR LOATHING GROWS—YOUR DARK EMOTIONS ENTERTAIN ME_**.**_]

'Entertain' was the wrong word, but the closest Naruto could find as he tried to understand the monstrous entity's message. It failed to grasp the enormity of the depraved and twisted sensations that the demon fox experienced. But the word could likewise say nothing of the complete and utter lack of joy—or anything resembling it—that the beast felt at Naruto's abhorrence for it.

Naruto hated it. More so now than ever before, on the cusp of discovery, he hated it. He had hated it before he had known it was sealed within him, blaming it for the death of his parents. He had hated it after the Sandaime's confession for every wrong in his life. And when he had first awoken to the '_drip_' of falling not-water and had truly met it for the first time... he had no longer hated it as a symbol. He had understood a small, miniscule part of what the Kyuubi no Youko was and he _hated_ it for itself.

The demon found some sick emotion-that-wasn't-joy in that, and Naruto didn't know how to stop.

[**_YOU STAND BEFORE ME A BEFOULED WRETCH, AND QUAKE BEFORE MY DIVINE GLORY_**.] Images and greater things—were there a sense that could 'see' beyond sight, the demon possessed it—rushed over Naruto in a painful surge, but he had years of practice at the art. Though he shook grotesquely and gagged and bit back half-screams, he was able to pull meaning from the flow in short time. [**_BUT KNOW THAT IT WAS BY NO MISTAKE THAT YOU SLUMBER WITHIN THIS MACHINE_**.]

"Don't," Naruto whispered. It was a ghost of a sound, but the entity heard him anyways, though it didn't acknowledge his words. He wasn't going to like what it was going to say next—he knew it in a way that could be explained, felt through the most basic connection binding the two.

The unbearable feel of claws and hands gripped at him, disappearing and reappearing at some incomprehensible whim across his form. He didn't dare to look in the water, but he could feel _their_ grasp on his legs, could feel the clinging sound of the Kyuubi's snarls snipping at his shoulders and he gagged. He shook and writhed, splashing the dark fluid away from him, but the terrible sensation of touching never ceased.

[**_TREACHERY LED YOU TO SLEEP IN THIS, THE VENUE MOST EXPOSED TO THOSE YOU SO FOOLISHLY ATTEMPT TO BEFRIEND. KNOW, MORTAL, THAT YOU HAVE BEEN BETRAYED_**.]

He didn't want to hear this. "Stop it! Just shut up!" he shouted, knowing it was futile before he made the effort. With maleficent intent the demon continued, each word Naruto dredged from its message dripping with more taint that before it. Behind the wreath of shadows the demon shifted, its outline barely visible through the umbral shroud.

Ideas shook his mind, trembling with a dreadful eagerness as it continued. [**_BLAME YOUR HOPELESS SEARCH FOR AFFECTION—HAVE YOU NOT LEARNED THAT YOU ARE UNLOVED? IN YOUR OWN WORLD YOU HAD NOBODY_**.]

"Stop…"

[**_YOUR HUNT IS USELESS, FOR NONE COULD LOVE ONE SO FETID AS YOU, DEMON YOUTH_**.] Naruto pulled further away from the demon as the marks on his face began to peel, pulling free from his skin to stand as whiskers. Deep furrows were left in their wake. He could feel blood begin to run out of them.

But it wasn't blood, and he retched into the black water as orange-red youki bubbled out of the wounds. The slightest touch tore and burnt, but the pain was a blessing compared to the sheer _filth_ of it, the degrading sensation as it oozed down his face like colorful tears.

[**_YOU DELUDE YOURSELF INTO THINKING THAT YOU ARE HUMAN, YET YOU ARE NOT—DO NOT DENY THIS TRUTH FOREVER. WHAT WOULD THEY THINK IF THEY SAW YOUR FACE, THESE FRAIL CREATURES AND THEIR SHALLOW LOVE? YOU WOULD BE HATED AND HUNTED DOWN, KILLED FOR BEING THE MONSTER YOU ARE_**.] Eyes that glowed red from the fires of devoured suns stared spitefully at down at the pitiful intruder into its realm.

"You're wrong. They aren't… they won't do that. There aren't shinobi here." His words were soft and weak.

[**_DEATH IS UNIVERSAL TO HUMANS—HERE THE SAME AS YOUR HOME, THEY WILL KILL. IT MATTERS NOT WHERE YOU ARE OR WHAT WORLD YOU RESIDE IN, LONELINESS AND I WILL BE YOUR ONLY COMPANIONS. FOR THIS SIN YOU DESERVE ALL HATRED_**.]

The foaming youki poured from his cheeks into his mouth, down his throat, over his chest. It sapped his strength and made his skin into rancid offal. The young shinobi desperately wanted to argue against the Kyuubi's statement, but there was a terrible certainty in it that he could not rail against.

Was it truly too much to hope for gain some manner of friendship here? If he could keep the filth of him hidden, couldn't he create something in this place called Earth?

'_No,_' whispered the voices, carried on still winds that didn't blow in the massive chamber.

The very day he had first served as host to the primordial titan, he had been marked as apart from others. The Kyuubi had done more to define his life than anyone had since, and it was right—there wasn't a point in reaching out to others. Yet…

Yet… even though it wouldn't work out, could he not try to hold onto that wonderful warm feeling while it lasted?

The demon snarled at the very idea of his contentment. [**_PLACE YOUR TRUST AND YOUR HOPES IN OTHERS, AND YOU RISK ONLY MORE _BETRAYAL**.]

The hissing emphasis of the word set the shadows spinning and a kaleidoscopic flurry of naught dancing across his mindscape. It breezed close to him, and the hands that reached for his body stilled in its presence, though his own felt torn in the proximity to the paradox.

It demanded a reply. And Naruto had to ask. "Who… who did it? Who could know about you, and force this in the open before everyone?"

He didn't want to say the word, but it rang in the air of its own accord, audible without being spoken. Audiences with the Kyuubi ended in pain and blood, and when his body started to split with wounds in the middle of a crowded train car…

They would fear him. Hate him. The magical parts of the school would try to find out what was wrong with him, and in the process would find the demon. They would understand what he was—how couldn't they?—and Konoha would repeat itself.

Teeth that could sheer off mountaintops glistened despite the lack of light as the fox grinned. Its body still thankfully hidden in darkness, its eyes and teeth seemed to float in nothingness behind the nine measureless pillars that barred the demon in its prison and forced it to keep its jailor alive.

Malice beyond the conception of man radiated from it, taking physical form and dripping as black water into the boy's mind as the demon spoke not-words. They weren't the spikes of ideas jabbed into his skull as before—no, it had moved past that into another game. Red-hot and burning his thoughts and his body, a piece of red slipped into his ear like a slug to whisper foul things into his soul. [**_HAVE YOU NOT REALIZED THE TRAITOR'S NAME? SHE IS THE ONE BY WHOM YOU HAVE SLEPT_**.]

A chill rushed down Naruto's back, more terrible even than the pain the Kyuubi gave him. It could not be Zazie. It couldn't. His voice was choked and stilled, unable to articulate more than a simple, pained denial.

"No…"

[**_SHE, OF DEMON'S BLOOD BORN, HAS SEEN YOUR DREAMS AND KNOWS THE TRUTH OF WHAT YOU ARE. DISGUSTED BY YOUR UNWORTHY SELF, SHE HAS CONSPIRED TO RUIN YOU. YOUR 'FRIENDSHIP' WAS A LIE, A DECEIT_**!]

"Shut up."

[**_NOW DO YOU KNOW YOU ARE DOOMED TO FAIL? DISCARD YOUR WEAKNESS, EMBRACE POWER! ABANDON KINDNESS AND MERCY BOTH, FOR THEY PALE BEFORE HATE AND DESPAIR. IN ALL THE WORLD, YOU HAVE ONLY ME. I WILL TAKE YOUR HATE AND GIVE YOU STRENGTH, POWER TO PAY BACK THOSE WHO WRONGED YOU. TAKE IT, TAKE YOUR REVENGE, AND KILL ALL_**—]

"I SAID TO SHUT UP!"

A surge of raw and unshaped anger coursed through Naruto, and in an instant the water around him became clear and blue, the air still, the paradox silent, the invader in his head dispersed. He lashed out with a scream of rage, thrusting his hand towards the vast cage.

His mind (_his_ mind! Not the demon's, no matter how much power it held) bent to his will and the water launched across the intervening space, twisting into a lance of such massive proportions that it scarcely fit through the bars of the prison. But it did fit, and the piercing end of it disappeared into the center of the mass of shadows, the base centered at Naruto's feet.

There was absolute silence.

No dripping. No breathing. No snarling. No movement. And Naruto began to realize his folly.

[**_I HAVE BEEN TOO LENIENT WITH YOU_**.]

A black that made the void of space seem bright soaked into the water, then an orange red which seemed to poison the very concept of color—each playing off the other, tainting and corrupting the spear Naruto had created. He could only watch as the colors rushed towards him, almost faster than his eyes could track.

He closed his eyes and flinched away in fearful anticipation of what the corruption would do to him—to gaze upon it stung at his eyes, the visual equivalent of trying to eat putrid rot—yet as the wretched shades approached they split around him to infect more of the mind he had, so briefly, claimed as his own.

What a foolish sentiment, here in the demon's realm.

The demon fox shifted, its movement sending waves of darkness across the surface of now black and red liquid. [**_ANGUISH SHALL TEACH YOU—__NOW BEHOLD ME_**_**!**_] With the last roaring statement, the shadows draped across its form fell away completely, and the Kyuubi no Youko stood before the Uzumaki in all its profane splendor.

Naruto screamed and clawed at his eyes to tear the image out. But before he do more than scratch, thick and roiling youki rose from every direction to entrap him, caging him like an insect in amber.

It flowed over his skin, scalding him and pressing into him. Where it touched felt decayed and worm-ridden, like an abandoned corpse, and Naruto vomited into the orange-red mass of boiling power—but the mess burnt into ash before it left his mouth, choking him.

But what was worse, it held open his eyes, and forced him to see.

Nine tails flailing in eldritch patterns, the Kyuubi glared at him, his unveiled visage too terrible for a mere mortal mind to endure. Motion could be seen across its body, blessedly drawing the eyes away from its horrible face—until Naruto saw what it was. Thickly oozing, yet skeletal shapes gathered through its fur, coalescing from hate and malice and the remembered tortures of those souls devoured by the demon, before finally dropping into the water.

Into the water, where he could even now feel their hands grasping him. No longer content with invisible hands, entire forms dredged forth, corpses pulling themselves from the dark water and bearing the faces of those who were once men. And women. And children. They piled over one another to get at him, reaching to grab him with partially-fleshed limbs.

But his vision of the demon was never obscured, and he could only see the dead through the corner of his eye.

His body burned and nausea played over him under the hands of cadavers, yet nothing was so horrific as the sight of the Kyuubi no Youko. Simpler retellings of it speak of its great size, its unnatural hate, its power, its tails… but nothing truly grasped its absolute and alien nature.

Naruto saw—no, the demon _forced_ him to see—a part of its entirety. Unbound by any veneer of civility, the truth of the Kyuubi was laid bare before him and savaged his sanity as though the mere fact of its existence possessed an irate will of its own.

Before it, he was nothing. Even trapped inside him, the Kyuubi was an existence so far beyond his own that his entire life, from birth to death, was meaningless. It reached into realms so far beyond mortal concepts as "fate" and "time" that even the reflection he could see in the demon's form only elicited further mindless screams from him.

His pain and his torments were insignificant to it. It didn't even know his name. Despite his role, he was irrelevant to it—a figure drawn on paper trying to cage a real living being. If Naruto peered too deeply into it, it would destroy him simply by existing. Humankind was too small and unimportant for it to hate, yet it hated man anyways with an impure and immortal hostility.

And the Kyuubi showed him death. And blood. And pain, for such things were so bound into the weft of the demon that they were inseparable from its impenetrable core of hatred. Naruto screamed and tried to avert his eyes, but the fox permitted no escape. Held before its evil and terrible glory, Naruto might as well not exist—yet the fox had no other outlet to express its abhorrence for the world.

In the center of it was hate. An absolute and inconceivable hate that sought to ruin and destroy all things. Such loathing that the merest glimpse of it boiled away time, that shattered all restraints, that even now slowly eroded away at the seal binding it. Hate that defied death and that preceded reality, and that would, with vengeful fury, rage at the end of all things.

It withdrew. Yet even as the shadows cloaked it again and its mind eased away from his, Naruto's battered mind continued to fray. The demon's every motion, every stance, every aspect of its existence, betrayed it for the unnatural aberration against the world that it was. It was impossible. The bijuu was the quintessential example of the Thing Which Should Not Be, and its simple presence sapped at his shredded sanity.

Quiet, less than lucid murmurings escaped his lips, muffled by the youki surrounding him. The entity glared down at him with a spite that took flight and latched onto him with bat-like wings. [**_REMEMBER THAT, AND DARE NOT FORGET, FOR I'LL NOT VISIT YOUR DREAMS THIS TRIP. THE TRAITOR WANTS YOU TO BLEED, AND I MUST PUNISH ENEMIES BEFORE YOU. AND IF YOU ARE FOUND OUT BY OTHER HUMANS, YOU MIGHT DIE—THIS SEAL DEMANDS I KEEP YOU ALIVE AT ANY COST_**.]

The youki faded, dropping Naruto into the arms of the dead. He screamed, flailing in wild desperation, but his body began to disappear. [**_STRANGE SPELLS APPROACH—YOU MUST BE READY_**.]

Naruto became pale and ghostlike, and began to slowly rise out of his mindscape. The demon's parting words echoed towards him with quiet promise.

[[**_WHEN THIS TRIP IS DONE, I SHALL RETURN. YOUR PUNISHMENT IS NOT YET FINISHED_**.]

* * *

><p>Naruto awoke with gasping breath, his lungs stripped of all air. His chest heaved as he swallowed air, trying to breathe in the aftermath of his visitation.<p>

His eyes couldn't stay still. _He_ couldn't stay still, twitching in the aftermath of his exposure and the maddening terror of the demon's taint. Moving around in his seat to survey the train car helped, but after being held like that… he needed to get free. And that would have to wait until they got to Kyoto.

The thought made him shudder, but he bore it. It could have been worse.

The girl who had been sitting by him had moved up closer to the front of the car to join the rest of the class, who seemed to have set up an impromptu tournament of some card game. No one in the back of the train was paying attention to him, so he was for all intents and purposes alone. That was good.

He leaned back in the comfortably cushioned chairs and stared out the window. The scenery passed by at a fantastic speed, and he was certain that nobody would be able to see his face as his tears dripped down it. As hidden from the world as he could be in the circumstances, Naruto began to piece together his unraveling sanity.

For anyone else, this would be the task of a lifetime, a goal they may never achieve if they even possessed the clarity to strive for it in the first place. It took years of help and medicine and counseling. Few who dared to attack the Kyuubi during its attack had survived, but those who did had been driven mad by it. In the time since its attack, perhaps a dozen of the demon's victims had been released from Konoha's asylums.

Even those who remained in the village had suffered, miles away from the battle with the Kyuubi itself. The lesser demons it had called forth were defeated readily enough, but the damage of the bijuu's very presence inflicted was not so easily handled—or handled at all. Everyone bore scars carved into their minds and souls by sheer virtue of its unending hatred—strange perversions or obsessions, personality shifts, psychopathic, ritualistic, or narcissistic behavior.

Naruto once heard that Danzō had been Hiruzen Sarutobi's closest friend.

Yet these problems met the younger generation lightly, or even not at all. On his deathbed, as Hokage explained the events of Naruto's entire life to the boy, he had explained that the minds of children were as water before the supernatural, even as they were fragile before the material—foul aura that traumatized the older had little effect on anyone below six years.

And he, who had been exposed to the vile taint of the demon his whole life, had retained some small part of that due to the protection from the seal. It was the only conclusion Naruto could come to for why he could endure meeting the demon time and time again (not daily, or even weekly, thank the Sage!) without going irrevocably insane.

Or perhaps he was simply a very functional madman.

That wasn't a comfortable idea to bandy about, and he discarded it quickly in favor of tightening the reins on his mind. Long practice had made him skilled at putting himself back together after his conversationswith his guest, and it would not take him years—or even days—to return to normal.

His hands slid up his arms, testing his skin. It didn't have the tingle of new flesh—the sensation of burning demonic energy had been just that, a feeling lacking any roasted skin to go along with it. Naruto touched the marks on his face, only slightly surprised to find that they really had become whiskers again. With a smoothing fingertip, a thought, and a lot of chakra he pressed them back against his cheeks where they again became nothing more than designs under his eyes. He truly had no idea how that worked, but it did and he was grateful for it.

Naruto wiped away the salty drops that trailed down the tear tracks on his face, giving a small and rueful smile at his own ineptitude. His class was up there playing games (when had he started thinking of them so possessively?), while he hid in the back and fell apart. What a marvelous role model he was.

Perhaps his legs shook a little as he stood from his seat and walked up to towards the students, but he doubted anyone would notice. Well, almost no one would notice—Kaede did, though she thankfully had the tact not to ask about it. Maybe he could pass it off as the result of a hard day's training if she ever did.

"Hey," he greeted, drawing upon his elaborate vocabulary and accomplished talent at socialization.

Yue gave him a brief nod. "Naruto-sensei."

"Makie, you should definitely play that one!"

"What? Leave me alone Ako, I've got half my meal tickets riding on this game. Go back to sleep!"

"Right… this is the third turn of my 'Dreaded Frog Hell' card, but I'll keep holding off its effect for now. I'll cast 'Taboo: Cranberry Trap' instead, reducing both you and Haruna to only five points." Yue gave a tiny, smug smile, like she had accomplished something noteworthy.

Yūna (that was the dark-haired one with the small ponytail sticking out the side of her head, right?) cast a dark look at the shorter girl. "I'm going to get you back for that, but let's stop you from repeating that, shall we? I'll use the defensive spell 'Maid Secret Skill: Killing Doll', granting me a three point health buffer and dealing a point of damage should you try to attack."

With a glazed look in his eyes, Naruto tried to pretend like he understood what was happening. Kaede laughed at him, but politely. "Quite the complex game, isn't it? I don't bother keeping up with it so I can't blame you for being lost, especially considering how tired you were earlier."

The girl scrutinized him with those always-closed eyes of hers. "Though you seem to be quite rested now. Sleep well?"

He put on a sheepish grin for her. "Well enough," Naruto replied, in one of those meaningless statements that didn't actually say anything. Something was going to happen soon, and when he was in its presence the demon had stripped the weariness from his body. He tried to think about the silver linings and not about… everything else.

Like what the girl who had befriended him would do when she found out how monstrous he was. The thought of Kaede's eyes widening in anger and betrayal, and the acts that would follow, cast a chill down his shoulders, forcing him to turn his face away from her.

Although the train car was full of sounds—talking girls, the vibration of travel, Madoka's strange music device—he could still hear the sound of approaching footsteps. A glimpse to the side allowed him to see Negi reflected in the windowpane, and tension bundled in Naruto's shoulders as he neared.

'_What does it take for you to understand that I'm not going to talk about it? Especially not _now_. I'm fine. I'll _be_ fine—there's nothing wrong with me! I don't need to touch anyone, and I don't need you to help me—not with this. It doesn't matter anyways._'

That last, at least, he knew was a lie. After all, he had seen Konoka's face when that Setsuna girl had left without a response. It was not the same—there was no contact involved—but it was similar enough to be uncomfortable.

But he was surprised when the ermine-bearing boy didn't speak to him at all, instead addressing their students. "That looks fun. What are you playing?"

Yūna was able to pull herself from her war with the others long enough to give him a smile. It was more honest than anything Naruto had given in a long time. "It's the hugest collectable card game around! I can't believe you don't know about it. You battle one another using magic spells… although I suppose that's why you don't know about it, huh?"

"What?"

She coughed. "Well, you don't really seem like the magic type."

Negi gaped at Yūna like she had bashed him in the forehead with a brick. "I-is-is that so?" But no answer was forthcoming as the lopsided-ponytail-girl returned her attention to the game. Chamo hopped from one side of Negi's shoulders to the other in quiet amusement.

The battle was reaching some sort of climax, if the serious expressions the girls were making were anything to judge by. He still had no idea what was going on, but the mundane card game was soothing after his ordeal, and he savored… whatever it was that was happening. He could enjoy this, and hold onto it while it lasted.

"Alright then. I'll use my 'Flame Spell' card on Paru!"

Haruna gave her a raised eyebrow. "A boring old 'Flame Spell'? Not an 'Incendiary Flame Spell Called Down From Heaven', or 'Frozen Flame Spell', or 'Spell of Flame Given Life', or 'Robot Pirate Ninja Flame Spell'? That's sort of… blah."

Naruto gave another cautious glance at Negi, who had simply walked away after checking in on them. Not all that long ago Negi had been doing everything he could to get his attention, but now he was just ignoring him? It made Naruto feel a little uneasy.

"It may be boring, but it'll still deal a full five points of damage."

"That's bullshit! Let me see that!" With her long, slightly messy black hair and rectangular glasses, it really didn't surprise Naruto to find that she was an artist. She fit his mental image of one (one of them, at least). "Damn. This is a really powerful attack spell! They should give it a better name. But it's actually only one point, since I've got all these sweet barrier cards active. Hah!"

"I'm afraid you don't, actually," cut in the placid voice of Yue, who had until then been quietly watching their exchange. "Since we're on the fifth turn, my 'Dreaded Frog Hell' has reached full power, and I can pull from any two of its available effects."

"… shit."

She gave a very small smile. She was obviously enjoying this. "As such, I'll use its ability to act out of phase and eliminate all defensive magic in play except my own."

"You b—!"

"Ahem. Girls, remember that this is still a school function." Shizuna said, walking up to join the young teacher and assistant as they stood by their students. She bore a warm smile despite her reproving words. "And you are still expected to obey certain rules, including those relating to swearing."

Haruna mumbled her agreement while the rest of the class greeted Shizuna, their happy voices attesting to how loved the motherly sensei was (of course, even Naruto had figured that out after his first few days around Mahora. Everyone liked Shizuna-sensei).

"Well… you're dead, so fork over the goodies! You wagered five chocolates, right?" Yūna demanded, salivating at the opportunity for confectionary treats.

The vanquished grumbled as she pulled out a box. "Stupid Yue and her stupid frogs…"

"Rrrribbit."

"KYAAAA!"

Like a small green harbinger of the apocalypse, a frog leapt out of Haruna's snack box and onto Yūna. She blubbered as she sunk into her seat, unable to accept the terrible _thing_ that had taken residence atop her head. Her classmates closest to her pulled away with squeals of disgust, while those further off only laughed.

"Wh-what's wrong?"

"It's right there! Asuna, there's a frog on her head!" a blue-haired background character replied.

Naruto shook his head and plucked the amphibian from the shuddering girl's hair. It struggled in his grasp, but he kept a firm hold on it. "You should keep a better watch over your pet, Haruna."

She recoiled from him and the frog. "What? No, that's not mine."

There was only enough time to process her words before another scream pierced through the train car, then another. Then frogs began to pour out of everything and the cacophony _really_ started.

Hundreds of them croaked and leapt across the room like it was mating season, crawling out of bento boxes and backpacks. That sound by itself would have been deafening, but it was matched by the screaming of the dozens of girls, the two battling to create a discordant jumble that assaulted Naruto's enhanced hearing like needles.

He nearly slipped over one of the croaking critters as he stumbled back, dropping the one he held and trying to muffle the sound with his hands. The car was chaos—frogs leapt across aisles and into laps, and the students wildly tried to get away from the slimy little things (which, of course, only led them towards more). Shizuka, the sensei present he would have expected to most be able to control the mess, had fainted after receiving a face full of frog when she opened her thermos.

"Calm down!" Naruto shouted, forced to try his hand at class management. "Panicking doesn't help! Just try get them contained!"

His attempt was as effective as he expected it to be. As soon as the words left his lips they were swallowed up in the havoc that surrounded him, which also meant that the class couldn't hear the expletives he threw afterwards.

Well, if no one else could hear him then he'd have to take his own advice. The next two frogs that leapt in front of him found themselves dangling by their legs, neatly snatched out of the air by nimble fingers (catching frogs was considerably safer than juggling shuriken, he noted). Naruto managed to grab another three in quick succession before his attempts just resulted in him slapping the frogs against their brethren.

Although he had them in hand, he had nowhere to put them. He nudged over bags with his feet, trying to find an empty pack he could use to store the frogs, only to find one shoved in his face. Several (very dead) frogs lay at its bottom. He looked up from the plastic sack to the arm holding it to Kaede, who had pulled her legs up onto her seat so she could wrap her free arm around them. A shivering Kaede cut a figure remarkably unlike that of the confident girl he had met before.

"Are you alright?" he asked, shouting to be heard despite the short distance between them.

She gave him a strained smile. Her eyes were wide open—the first time he had seen them so—and her face was telling him that she wasn't far from vomiting all over him. "Fine. I'm just… fine. Just take care of the toads, please. Quickly."

"Actually, these are frogs. Toads are—" One of the frogs hopped too close to Kaede, and suddenly sprouted a knife in its face. Naruto decided that maybe she didn't want to hear about the differences between the noble toad and mere frogs (which of course every child of Konoha knew by heart), and shoved the amphibian into the bag along with those he held.

By the time he had turned from Kaede to start stuffing more of the agile frogs in the sack, the initial surprise and disgust of the onslaught had faded. For plenty of the girls, this meant that they were still yelling and trying to whack the frogs away with whatever they had on hand (in one case, pulling forth a cross and shouting something about plagues and Egypt). But even though he hadn't been here long, it had been long enough that he wasn't surprised that a number of students had gotten out to round up the pests.

What a wonderful class 3-A was.

What followed was a confusing and blurry mess of green as they gathered the frogs. Some of those helping were hardly able to keep up with their leaping speed, but a few more than made up for that lack. A very fit and tanned blonde in particular dominated her end of the car, never ceasing movement as she plucked them out of the air with ease.

After a long and desperate war that was far too gruesome and dreadful to describe, they captured all the frogs—or at least, all the ones they could find. This left the girls and two boys (Negi had entered the fray at some point, though for the life of him Naruto couldn't remember when) with bags full of squirming amphibians to deal with.

"Ohoho! I win! I capture 108 and have biggest bag, so am winner, yes?" said the darkly colored girl. She proudly held up a large, bulging sack of frogs, the sheer weight of them straining the plastic.

"You actually kept track, Kū Fei?"

"Of course! Is not competition if not keeping score," she replied with another laugh, which made Naruto wish he had bothered to count them. He'd switched bags at some point though, so he couldn't try to compare that way. Ergo he lost by default, which made something in him want to demand they try again.

Asuna shook her head as she grabbed one of the smaller bags and upended it into a larger one that wasn't quite full. "Over frogs? I really don't get you sometimes."

She leaned over to tie off the sack, which put her face close to his own. "What the hell happened?" Asuna demanded in a whisper as she pretended to fumble with the plastic bag. "I'm not stupid, you know—" (she was) "—and I know magic when I see it!"

"I think Negi would know more about that. I'm not precisely a wizard."

"Yeah, but you're closer."

If Naruto hadn't already had a headache, he probably would have gotten one at that point. "Where is he? I need to talk to him."

Asuna pointed off to the front of the car. "Tell him that once we're alone, he better give me a good explanation for this. If I find out that a frog jumped down my shirt for something stupid, I'm going to be pissed." He didn't see her hand until he was given a gentle push towards the other boy.

Nausea coiled from his stomach, sinking into him until it rested in between his shoulder blades. Too soon. It was too soon. He wanted to retch, her touch accenting his filth and soiling her fingers. He—

—_They piled over one another to get at him, reaching to grab him with partially-fleshed limbs_—

He had to restrain himself from the sudden and violent urge to strike her across the face. There might actually be something wrong with him.

Naruto quietly slipped away, dodging past the students who stood like obstacles in the aisle until he reached Negi. With the chaos dying down, Negi had taken the time to try to reestablish some control over the car.

"Class Rep-san, take roll. If anyone panicked and ran out of the car I need to know about it. And where's the nurse's aide? Have her help Shizuna-sensei until she returns to consciousness."

Makie squeaked, and held up the flopping arm of the nurse's assistant. "She fainted too! Wh-what are we supposed to do now?"

"She did? Talk about horrible timing. Alright, I'll need you to lay both of them on flat their backs and get something under their legs to make sure the blood is flowing to their brain. Fainting is caused by oxygen deprivation so you need to make sure they can breathe. You might need to… um…" Negi coughed and averted his eyes, his cheeks turning red. "Loosen their shirts a little, and if problems persist give them mouth-to-mouth. Keep a timer after they wake up—they shouldn't stand for at least another fifteen minutes."

With obvious confusion in her eyes and a nervous sweat Makie nodded, but fortunately so did a number of less ditzy students.

He raised his voice so he could be heard through the rest of the car. "Everyone else, please get back to your seats so Class Rep-san can take roll." Finally having obtained a moment's breathing space, he shared a look with Naruto, easily seeing what the other wanted. "I need to speak with Naruto-sensei about what just happened, so excuse me."

Negi and Naruto stood nearly against the door that lead to the next compartment and spoke in whispers so as not to let their class overhear them. "I don't suppose you've managed to come up with any groundbreaking revelations yet?"

Negi shook his head. "I've barely even had time to think. But it has to be the Kansai Magic Association."

"There's no doubt about that!" said Chamo, who nursed a black eye and a limp as he rested upon his wizard's shoulder. "I can't believe they'd use such a public and vulgar display of magic! And getting innocent people involved like that is downright criminal."

He was personally just glad the sorcerers hadn't set off an explosive. "It could have been a lot worse. At least those frogs don't seem to be poisonous. But Chamo… what happened to you?"

The ermine huffed and turned his head. "Well, to you giants it might not seem like a big deal, but down here those amphibious abominations put up one hell of a fight. I gave better than I got, though. Gave 'em the old one-two!"

"So what was the purpose of this?" Negi mused, bringing a hand up to stroke at his chin. "They didn't actually _do_ anything. Sure, they shook us up, but I can't accept that as the only reason for someone to cause such a public uproar."

"That could be precisely the point," Naruto supplied. "It could have been a message, saying that they could get close to us and we would never notice. A threat to hand over the letter before worse happens. Where did the frogs even come from?"

"I don't know enough about oriental sorcery to answer that."

Chamo frowned. "Hm… get close to us. I think you're on to something there. But I don't know if they would have needed to get close to cast the spell, although they certainly would have been able to in the confusion it caused." His eyes widened. "In the confusion…"

"The letter!" Negi's nervously shaking hand felt about the inside of his suit's coat until Naruto could hear the rustling of paper. He pulled it forth to the reassurance of the three present, who sighed in relief.

Then a bird whisked by and stole it.

So unexpected was the bird theft that they could not help but stand blankly for the briefest of moments as they tried to understand what had just happened. Then realization set in, and the chase was on.

Envelope in beak, the swallow darted through the air with near-weightless movements in its rush towards the rear of the train. Negi took the lead from him, having no need to slow to avoid brushing against those students who still had not returned to their seats. Each of them stepped nimbly through the narrow space between the prone forms of the unconscious females.

The door to the next compartment slid open at the bird's approach. It was but a few inches, but that was enough for the tiny swallow to flit through before it closed by some unseen hand. Negi slammed it open again when he reached it, unnecessarily yelling for Naruto to "come on!"

Naruto was right behind him, and together they raced through the next car. But even though there were less people in the way, the unnaturally-moving bird still only got further away from them as the small confines of the vehicle hindered their movements.

He had to stop it before it escaped. Naruto pulled Kaede's kunai out of his pocket (taken from the frog she'd impaled) and hurled it towards where the bird's movements were taking it. But just before its wing beats pushed it into the dagger's path the swallow _folded_ out of the way.

"What was that?" a wide-eyed Naruto asked they followed the bird-thing another car closer towards the back of the train. "That's not natural!"

Negi laughed. "Well, when you think about it, can we really be saying that?"

"This is no laughing matter, you two! That must be a shikigami, a type of Japanese familiar! It looks like a bird, but it's actually a spirit animating a piece of paper!"

"You have shikigami here, too?"

"Not the time for planetary cross-cultural analysis, Naruto-kun!" shouted Negi as they dashed through yet another car, trying to keep the paper construct in their sights.

"Aniki, it's getting away! Your staff's in the luggage-do you have a wand?"

Negi nodded and pulled a stick topped with a small ringed planet out of his pocket. "After the fight with Evangeline-san, I made sure to be prepared."

"And you didn't think to use it earlier?!" Naruto demanded, frustrations mounting as the bird moved yet further from them. "Blast it down!"

"I was trying to figure out how to do it without revealing our secret to everyone! But—if it would just stay still!—if it's as Chamo said, I might be able to break the spirit's connection to the paper. No one would see that!"

The agile shikigami ducked and weaved when the incanting Negi pointed his wand at it, hugging close to the ground as it went through the barely-opened door. The frustrated wizard made a sharp motion with his wand and the door slid open fully before the trio reached it. Words of power once again fell from his lips as they dashed towards the next compartment.

"Rastel maskil magistAAHHH!"

"Boxed lunches for KYAAAH!"

Pushing her cart directly into the way of the door, the lunch lady took the full force of Negi's charge. Boy, woman, lunches, and ermine sprawled to the floor, although the cart itself stubbornly remained stuck in the doorway. This was no impediment to Naruto, who simply vaulted over the metal barrier and pile of people and continued to chase after the bird.

An unmistakable metallic rasp graced his ears. The shikigami had slipped out of sight, and urgency pushed Naruto to go faster.

That was a mistake, one almost caused him to run past and miss her entirely. She was kneeling down by the bullet train's exit. And she was holding the missing letter.

Sakurazaki Setsuna.

Naruto stopped to look at her, and her eyes met his own. If they had been sharp before, they were razors now, primed to tear into him if he showed but a moment of hesitation or weakness. There was nothing in her gaze of her earlier dismissal of him back at the station.

"Were you looking for something, Naruto-_sensei_?" Setsuna hissed as she rose to her feet. The long object she always carried with her fell to the ground with a thud, her hand holding tightly to its end.

Though he knew not the source of the venom in her voice, he could certainly react to it. He bared his teeth in instinctive response to the threat she posed and stepped away, shifting his left foot back and sinking into a half-crouch as the tension between them mounted.

A spark would have had them at one another's throats without another word spoken. Or Negi could show up and kill all the tension by being naïve. "You found my letter!"

"E-Eh?" The harsh tones faded and her eyes softened as her attention switched to the other teacher. "Oh, yes. I believe that you…" Setsuna paused to direct her vicious gaze towards Naruto, "… dropped this."

"Thank you, thank you so much! This is really important, so we would have gotten in a lot of trouble if it disappeared. You really saved us!" Negi said, enthusiastically heaping praise on the girl as she handed the all-important envelope to him.

"Then, perhaps I could suggest that you be more careful in the future, sensei?" A death glare pierced Naruto, though he didn't flinch away. He wasn't exactly a stranger to such looks. "Especially when you arrive in Kyoto. If I may be excused?"

With that Setsuna bowed and walked past them towards the front of the train, where the rest of the class waited.

"Oh. Thank you again for your help, Setsuna-san!"

Chamo poked his head out from behind Negi's. "'Thank you' for what? I don't trust her a bit!"

Negi gave his familiar a reproachful stare. "That's a bit harsh, isn't it?"

"For someone so smart you can be pretty stupid sometimes, Aniki. She's suspicious! Did you see how she was treating Naruto-nīsan?"

"That… that was bad, wasn't it?" Negi said, a pensive expression on his face as he gave a look towards the front of the train. Setsuna was long gone. "She doesn't normally speak up in class, so I don't see why she'd be so mean to you, Naruto-kun. Did have any idea?"

Naruto shook his head. "I haven't even talked to her outside of school. I don't know the girl at all."

The ermine nodded and shook his little arms around as he made his argument. "And there's more! There on the ground is that shikigami—it must have been flying right to her! It can only mean one thing, that Sakurazaki is a spy from the West!"

Negi sputtered and began spouting disbelieving denials that such a thing could be possible. Naruto knelt to examine the remains of the shikigami—it had been cut cleanly in two, with no signs of tearing. It didn't even look like an actual bird anymore, but rather a flat paper cutout of one drawn over with a dozen words. It was still and lifeless when he poked at it, but he tore it apart anyways to be sure before tossing it in the nearby garbage disposal. Spirit-things were freaky, and he didn't trust it not to come alive again if he left it alone.

But why would Setsuna need to cut her own familiar in half when she finished using it? Knowing nothing of magic, Naruto dismissed the thought as unimportant.

He stood to leave. "We should head back to our car, before the class causes the train to crash or something like that. I don't know if it's a good idea to leave them alone for too long."

Negi laughed. "You have a good point, but… first, we need to talk. It's about this morning."

Negi's last words were quiet, but they struck Naruto like nails on chalkboard. "No, we don't," he responded, his voice harder than he meant it to be. "I have nothing to say about it."

"That's fine."

Like a warrior braced against a charge that never came, Naruto was left unbalanced by Negi's passivity. "Y-You what? But you…"

"I had time to think about it while you slept." Negi shuffled and visibly struggled to keep his eyes locked on Naruto's, his discomfort obvious on every level. "On further review, I was too forward and inconsiderate of how you felt, for which I apologize. And it would be rather hard for you to enjoy the field trip if I kept attacking you, wouldn't it?"

"I… I still want to help, but I can't force help on you before you're ready to accept it. That's not what friends do. So instead let me just say that if you ever want to talk, I'll be there."

Naruto would have preferred it if Negi had directly confronted him again—it would have been much, much easier to deal with. It wouldn't have left him feeling disoriented and with the uncomfortable sensation that he had already lost.

He gave a shaky smile. "Thanks. Shall we go back, then?" They were stupid words, but the first that popped into his mind to end the conversation. Negi agreed, and Naruto started walking towards the front of the train. The other sensei's eyes burnt into his back like brands.

Thus had the unwitting Negi moved his 'healing' into something far less provocative. There wasn't anything wrong with him ('_That's a lie,_' whispered a part of him that couldn't keep its damnable honesty to itself), so he shouldn't have to worry about it. Since Negi wasn't confronting him anymore, he could just ignore the issue.

Except he couldn't, because Negi was his friend. He had said so, and they spent time together, and without him Naruto would be lost in this world. They were probably friends. The warmth of the idea (another friend, to set beside Kaede and Mana in his little friend-list) was countered by the knowledge that he could no longer discard Negi's concerns. Because he was a _friend_ now.

… Friends were complicated. No one had ever told Naruto this.

How was he supposed to handle this new, passive approach of Negi's? Instead of the expected relief that Negi had stopped interrogating him, he felt as though he had lost his footing.

Naruto's head hurt. He needed to think about something else.

He had been sleeping in the same room as a demon. Zazie was as filthy as he, of the same kin as the Kyuubi! At times it told the truth in a voice that permitted no room to be disbelieved, and at times truths that he couldn't accept were anything but lies. But this was fact, and the honesty of it vibrated in the marrow of his bones.

She had looked into his dreams. A demon had looked into his dreams. What else had she done, while she was in his head? What had she done to him while she—

Naruto's head hurt. He needed to think about something else.

Setsuna was a warrior. He could only blame himself for not noticing earlier (and that traitorous demon for keeping him up all—_stop_). But it had been made abundantly clear to him when they had met again in the car, his mind unfogged by fatigue.

The way her eyes scrutinized him, taking in everything that could give her an advantage. The way her every step seethed with a readiness to strike. And Naruto would bet his scrolls the long, wrapped-up item she carried with her was a sword—he knew the sound of a blade returning to its sheath.

She was dangerous. It was a little exciting, to be honest. Being a demon host gave certain advantages, and there was a point when the street toughs in Tanzaku had stopped being difficult. Maybe it was a bit stupid to actually _want_ to fight Setsuna when she looked like she could cut off his arms without a second thought, but…

It really did sound like fun.

And Naruto realized that the Headmaster was cannier than he had given the old man credit for. Class 3-A was full of girls who knew how to fight—had he only scratched the surface of it? Setsuna, Kaede, Mana, and without a doubt that terror Evangeline... perhaps Kū Fei, Chachamaru, Asuna? Konoe Konoemon hadn't made him an assistant teacher _just_ to help him get used to this new world. If Naruto had actually been any sort of threat… his students would have been able to put him down like a rabid dog.

It was clever—he was certain there was an old saying about not doing things for only one purpose. It was ruthless, but with teeth that might never need to be used. He was reminded of home.

His head still hurt. Calm and normalcy had been hard to find in the attack, despite no one being injured (except Chamo). He had been so busy that he hadn't had time to think—that was good. But now it was over, and his skull felt like it was coming apart at the seams.

All he needed to do was sit and stare out the window while he finished patching himself together—he'd probably been stupid for thinking that interacting with 3-A would help make him saner. So Naruto trudged towards his seat after a perfunctory scan of the car (no, it wasn't on fire, there was no blood, no pentagrams on the walls, no zombies).

Shizuka-sensei, bless her soul, had woken up and had been dealing with the aftermath of the crisis while the two of them were, in her words, "finding their wayward student". It actually took him a full minute to realize she was talking about Setsuna. He was really out of it (although he did use that minute to give Kaede back her kunai, so it wasn't entirely wasted).

Naruto sat down at his chair, his leg nudging against his backpack—and his entire body tensed. Cautiously, he grabbed a strap and lifted it, just an inch. It was heavier than it had been when he had packed it the night before.

Paranoia stormed through him—not the mad terrors of someone who's mind has been violated by an entity from beyond mortal conceptions of space and darkness, but the perfectly rational fear of someone who's personal belongings were left unattended amongst Class 3-A.

Slowly, he opened the top of the bag, alert for any sound or movement that would betray what was present within. He was looking for more of those damned frogs specifically, but with this class it was best to keep an open mind.

Nothing moved. He pulled it open in a sudden motion, exposing its secrets to the light.

A wooden grin. Those glinting eyes, and matching green hair. Ear… things, just the same as her sister's.

"Hiya! You look like you want to kill someone. Can I watch? Can I help? I can help a lot. Can I kill you?"

Naruto screamed like a little girl.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>

Naruto is an assassin from the Kansai Magic Association! I-I mean… *cough*. Ahem. Why hasn't anyone set that doll on fire yet?

Just so you know, I'm not trying to undo what I did last chapter—this is what I intended Negi to do from the beginning. This conflict was never about Naruto vs. someone else.

That isn't exactly how friendship works, Naruto, but keep doing your best.

Fanfiction dot net! Why do you insist that I cannot use smallcaps? The demon's speech looks much more obnoxious now than it does with smallcaps. I'm going to send a third request that they permit smallcaps to be used on this site. I can't be the only person who wants to use them.

Toads and frogs: Technically, both of them are frogs. The order _Anura_ is composed of frogs, and taxonomy makes no difference between toads and frogs. The difference between the two is informal, although some species are still called toads and there is a family called "true toads" (_Bufonidae_). But they are different in mythology, magic, symbolism, and in summoning—so Naruto isn't _completely_ wrong. Kaede dislikes frogs.

**Rastel Maskil Magister**: I'm using the Del Rey version of Negi's activation key. This is in respect to Del Rey Manga, the original publishers of the English translation of Negima from 2004 to 2010 before it was picked up by the U.S. branch of Kodansha when DRM went defunct (although Del Rey itself is still fully active). Also, because I like this version (having read it the most).

**Shikigami**: In mythology, shikigami are considered to be invisible, but can become visible by being placed into a special paper container. They often appear as birds or animals, and if their master loses control over them they may turn on him and try to kill him (or her). That is in myth, at least—of course, once you start looking at how things are used in fiction, it all becomes more personalized and sometimes more interesting (ex. Nurarihyon no Mago). Shikigami in my story are spirits bound into paper, which then create a magical shell based upon what kanji their onmyōji drew on them—depending on what is written and the skill of the practitioner, the shikigami can have a few additional powers. Whenever it is more convenient for them they can take on the attributes of paper.

If anyone here is a troper, would you be willing to add this story to Tv Tropes?


	11. Route One

Describing dialogue for a character that has a unique speechbox can be… odd. But Dragonjek does not own Naruto or Negima.

Thanks to my proofreader, Vandebz, for shaping up this chapter.

Title credit to Junichi Masuda, composer for Pokémon Red and Blue. Route One is name of the music that plays on Route 1 outside of Pallet Town, when your journey actually begins. Although considering Makie, Ayaka, and Nodoka's race to the love stone… maybe Todem08's boss battle remix would fit better there. Ahahaha. Aha. Ha.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 11:<strong>

**Route One**

"Ah, Naruto-sensei. It is a pleasure to hear from you again so soon. How has your trip been?"

"Take her back! I'll do anything you want, just please—shut up! Stop laughing! You can't just— I saw it this time! You moved, you definitely moved! Stop lying!"

To capture Uzumaki Naruto, Chachamaru's mistress had ordered her to set up a great number of magical traps in the forest surrounding Mahora. After Evangeline and their new sensei had met, it fell to Chachamaru to remove them. To a human, each would have been a fiendishly complex masterwork of artifice capable of reducing even a talented mage to a helpless victim in moments.

The gynoid disabled a lever that existed in three places at once and would transform a fifteen meter area into an infinitely shrinking cage (which, of course, required her to simultaneously calculate the trajectory of the one thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven ice needles that were conjured to force her to dodge closer to the trigger UNLESS she destroyed the needles, which would activate a seven-layered illusion and teleport the lever into her body). After bypassing those obvious distractions, she of course had to deal with the real trap.

None of this consumed any noteworthy amount of the AI's attention, allowing her to focus on the more interesting interaction with her teacher. "It is good to hear that you and Chachazero are getting along."

There was dumbstruck pause on the other phone, as though Naruto didn't quite understand what she had said. "Do you hate me? Is that why you put your haunted slaughterdoll in my bag?"

"No! Please do not misunderstand, Naruto-sensei," Chachamaru hastened to explain. "I did not send my sister with you due to malicious intent. And she is animated by magic, not by the spirits of the departed. And 'slaughterdoll' is not a real word." That should put all of his worries to rest.

That made her feel satisfied. A job well done, like avoiding the lightning snakes the trap was dropping on her. "As I told you this morning, my mistress is cursed to stay within the school. My place, as her Ministrum Magi, is by her side. Chachazero thought the field trip would be exciting, so Mistress permitted her to go along." That said, asking while Evangeline was half-asleep might not half been the most appropriate way to get her consent.

Hm. This was troublesome. She would have to find out once she had finished her task.

Chachamaru could hear Chachazero sing something. There was a loud crashing sound, and glass broke on the other end of the phone. It sounded quite exciting over there. She wondered if they were having fun.

Naruto's voice was trembling when he took the phone again. "S-so she isn't a menstruium? How do I send her back? She's—stop it. STOP LOOKING AT ME!"

"_Ministrum_. It's the gender-neutral of 'Minister'. And yes, she also holds a doll contract with Evangeline—however, she is my senior by several centuries and has been trapped in this school with the mistress for longer than I have been active. It is not my place to judge her in this matter."

Chachamaru wondered occasionally what the doll thought of her imprisonment. She complained often of her immobility, but how did the construct powered purely by magic view the passing of time? Did the moments pass for her in the same inexorable flow that they did for her flesh and blood creator? Were the long stretches of paralyzed monotony frozen in her memory, unable to be deleted as a machine's could? Chachamaru did not begrudge her sister her trip at all.

Her hands held two iron bars that twisted in her grip like eels, her digits seeking the subtle depressions in the metal that would allow her to deactivate this section of Evangeline's trap. Still, her gentle synthesized voice continued to speak to Naruto, as the functions of a mere cell phone were easy to incorporate into a chassis as advanced as her own. Those ears weren't just for show.

"I don't believe there is any way to return Chachazero that wouldn't result in some manner of painful retribution, sensei. Bringing her with you would be the best course of action."

"But… but she's—oh no. She's moved again. I know she did—she's closer to the door!"

It seemed like they were really starting to become close. It warmed Chachamaru's central processing units to hear their friendship (this may also have been because she was on fire).

"Chachazero is unable to shift more than her head, Naruto-sensei," she quietly reminded him as she extinguished the flames.

"That's what _you_ say," Naruto shot back, vocal fluctuations indicating that he didn't believe her. But he sighed, and changed to another subject. "How did you do it?"

By 'it', Chachamaru could only assume that he meant when she had slipped her sister into his backpack. He had been quite tired when she had met him earlier that morning. It had not been difficult to take advantage of that and slip the puppet into his bag.

"I'm afraid I'm not certain what you mean, sensei." Aha. That was humorous. Because he wasn't specific in his request. So it was funny.

"You know what I—" on the end of the line Chachazero said something that the robotic student would need to replay later at a higher volume to hear, but which she could safely assume was insulting. "That does it! I'm turning you into firewood right now!"

"Ah… sensei, that might not be a good idea!"

It was good that Chachazero and Naruto-sensei were becoming close friends so quickly. Chachamaru loaded a memory file of her most successful tea ceremony in private celebration of this happy event.

* * *

><p>"Eheeheehee. This was fun. You can be pretty paranoid, y'know? Pity about the lack of blood and such, though."<p>

Naruto quietly reminded himself that Chachamaru had just given him some very good reasons to _not_ break her apart (mostly based around vampires), and tried not to leap across the bathroom at her. "Do you ever shut up?"

"Sure I do. Being quiet can be useful, you know. But if I don't have to, why would I want to?"

He wanted to argue against her on principle, but he was honestly afraid of what the psychopathic puppet might end up saying next. So he sighed and did his best to ignore the giggling marionette as he reached into his jacket.

His first, completely reasonable reaction to discovering her in his luggage (after screaming) was to close his bag, hurl it into another aisle, and try to get Negi's attention. Fortunately, Negi had one of those phone contraptions and had been willing to let him use it once they had arrived at Kyoto.

It had been nerve-wracking to see his students off the train, knowing what was in his backpack. Negi wouldn't carry it for him, so he could _hear_ her giggling at him almost non-stop, sending those terrible shivers down his spine as he did his part to ensure that Class 3-A didn't cause a riot—looking over the groups again, preventing littering, keeping students from other classes from sneaking into his, vice versa, and other such pivotal duties.

The backpack had felt like it was full of rocks, if those rocks were wrapped in papers bombs that were also poisonous and laughed at him. It had taken too long to find a restroom that would lock behind him so he could be completely alone with his… rock-bomb… thing.

Maybe that was a terrible comparison.

Chachazero was perched atop the paper towel dispenser, slightly scuffed from being punted into the ceiling (amongst other things) and giving him that stare of hers. That soulless stare that he could feel looking at him even when she was out of his sight. Not that he let her go unobserved for long. Kicking her around may have taken the edge off his fear (absolute terror was hard to maintain towards someone he bashed into a mirror), but it wasn't gone. Not towards that… thing.

"So what are you gonna do now? Huh? I bet it'll be interesting. You need to entertain me now, 'cause I came along. It's what a good host does, you know."

He glared at the demanding puppet. When he was angry at her (her, it… whatever), it was much easier to forget how _fucking creepy_ she was. And that she didn't blink. Ever.

"I don't think that you count as a guest when you snuck onto my bag like some sort of criminal," Naruto retorted.

She just laughed. "But wasn't the look on your face amazing? Did you see it reflected in my eyes? I hope you did, it was great. If I was Chachamaru I'd have recorded it and put it online."

What did that even mean? On what line? "Why did you come here? If you wanted to get out and see the world again, someone like Negi would be a better choice. You know I don't like you." That was an understatement.

"Awww. What a mean thing to say! And here I thought we'd become buddies after you stabbed a shard of ice into my face." Chachazero gave a chuckle that sounded utterly insane. She laughed a lot, which was as disturbing as watching a heaven transform into hell. "Ah well. Let's do some bonding! I can help you kill someone."

"That… I don't even… no. Just no."

Naruto thought that her immobility was probably the only reason the tiny psychopath hadn't tried to kill his entire class already. What would they do if they learned about her? What would they do if they learned about _him_? He hated to accept it, but the demon might not have been entirely wrong…

He shook his head to knock away his terrible and distracting thoughts while he pulled his scroll out of his pocket. He hadn't known what manner of security there was on the train, and so hadn't brought any weapons onboard. The fiasco with the shikigami had shown the depth of that mistake.

Furtive glances in the puppet's direction showed that Chachazero hadn't moved. Probably. She told him, as did Chachamaru, that the doll couldn't move more than her head. But she was just plain disturbing. Chachazero looked like she would fit into a horror movie, and had a matching attitude.

Her eyes were flat and empty, only seeming to spark up with unpleasant emotions when the mood seized her. Her body was eerily still while her head moved with almost silent creaks, following him with a perpetual smile on her face. Oh, she was supposed to be immobile, but there was no way he could trust that. But, trusting that for the moment she wasn't taking the chance to start to rediscover movement, he turned his attention back to the task at hand. She was, however, laughing at his worries.

A strange hesitation came over him as he opened the scroll and touched his fingers to the third seal. Rings of near-incomprehensible symbols formed an outer and inner circle; in the center, in a clear circle of unmarked paper lay a single character, which he already knew was 'iron'. It was the only seal in his inheritance requiring chakra instead of blood.

However, they were only _near_-incomprehensible—for the first time, Naruto recognized some of them. The language was different (and different even from what his people normally wrote in), but the meaning of some few characters were clear—'bird', 'seal', 'inverse'. This was only to be expected, after his reading lessons with Negi.

But there was something… different. Something he couldn't put a finger on and couldn't quite name. As he looked at the seals and traced the symbols with his fingertips, it felt as though there were something that _made sense_ about them, though Naruto could hardly imagine what it was. The sensation was strange and disconcerting, and to banish it he pushed chakra through his hand and into paper.

The bathroom rang with the sound of steel on clean, waxed tile.

"Oh. My. God. Ravish me, you sexy, sexy beast!" Had she moved closer to the door, or was he just deceiving himself?

Naruto tried not to lose his lunch. "What is wrong with you, Chachazero?"

"Well, I kill people and I eat hands. That's two things," she replied with a happy smile. She sounded like she was talking about sunshine and daisies.

"What."

She had the decency to cough (how did that work, when she had no lungs?) and turn her head to the side. "That was just the once. I wanted to know what they tasted like. It was actually a very messy and unpleasant experience for everyone involved."

Naruto desperately tried to scrub the memory of the entire conversation from his brain and scrambled away from her, for once eager not to look at the terrible monster that had somehow been entrusted to his care. He knelt down and began picking through the pile of weaponry. He didn't know what their attackers from the Kansai Magic Association might do next and thus had to be prepared for anything, but he also couldn't be armed to the point that his students could see them.

Once he was done he just had to go out there and… enjoy himself on this vacation. Whatever that meant. He had mostly put himself back together after his _encounter_, but still his head continued to ache. What would he do when it all started to fall apart?

Unfortunately, Chachazero sat there and watched the whole thing, and wouldn't keep her mouth shut. So he had to defend his inheritance from her stupid… stupidness.

"They aren't called 'ninja stars!'"

"That's not a piece of paper! It's a weapon! A wehp-pun!"

"Of course there's a purpose for giant shuriken! If I knew how to hide one, I'd bring it along to prove it to you."

"You shut your mouth. You shut your damn mouth right now. Axes the size of a bear are totally ninja weapons."

"I… I actually don't know what that is. It can probably kill someone, though. I'll just… um… leave that here."

"What? No, I'm not throwing marbles at people! These have smoke in them.

"I'm not into bondage! What is _wrong_ with you?"

"No. _No_. _**No**_. You can't have any of the knives. As a matter of fact, I'm not going to let you so much as _touch_ them. Just how stupid do you think I am?"

"Stop! ST-STOP LOOKING AT ME! STOP LAUGHING!

And so on.

* * *

><p>Kiyomizu-dera held more than a millennium of history, the aged temple bearing a sense of reverence that had sunk into the very soil beneath it. Yue and Akira touched the immense structure with obvious awe, while Konoka and Satsuki spoke quietly of their admiration for the ancient temple complex. Negi was quietly grateful that at least <em>some<em> members of his class respected that sort of thing, because the other half didn't.

At all.

"_I LOVE KYOTO_!" Sakurako screamed at the top of her lungs, half of her dangling of the edge of the Kiyomizu stage so more of the world could hear her.

"Hey, this is where that famous jump-off point is, right?"

"Someone should jump off right now!"

"People jumped? Who?"

"Don't mind if I do…"

Panic. Now was the time to flail one's arms and panic. "_NO_! NOBODY JUMPS OFF THE STAGE! Kaede-san, being in the Strolling Club does _not_ mean you can safely leap off a suicide spot."

"Initially, this was built as a stage to perform Noh plays and dances for the temple's statue of Kannon-sama." Yue took a long sip from her drink box, crumpling it and forcing her to pull out a new one before she continued her sudden, unexpected lecture. "During the Edo period there were 234 recorded incidents of people leaping off the Kiyomizu stage, as there was a belief that surviving the thirteen meter drop would get your wish granted. The survival rate was a surprising eighty five percent, considering the height."

"… Kaede, that's why you wanted to jump? Are you still going to?" Fūka demanded to know. "I'll take a picture with my phone. OW!"

The feistier of the Narutaki twins rubbed at her head as a piece of chalk fell to the floor. Naruto stepped behind her while bouncing another in his palm. "Let's keep the bloodshed to a minimum today, alright? Or I'll pop the next one on you so hard your grandchildren's heads will still be white."

Fūka cringed and backed away to hid behind her sister, who happened to be trying to hide behind her. Which of course resulted in them both falling down, to the amusement of their fellows.

It was a question that needed to be asked, and so Negi forwarded, "Did you… did you bring that chalk all the way from school?"

"Yep! I haven't had a chance to throw it at anyone in class yet, so I stuffed some in my bag in hopes that the trip would be more productive."

Negi tried to say something, but he honestly could not think of any way to respond to that.

But regardless of whether or not Naruto's idiocy had stolen the words out of him, his students hadn't run out. While Fūka whined and tried to untangle herself from Fumika, Yūna gaped at Yue with wide eyes. "Wow! We've got a real weirdo living amongst us! When did you become such an otaku?"

"Hey! She just likes shrines and stuff!" shot back Haruna. She reached out to put hand on her friend's shoulder. "Not an otaku. There's a huge difference."

Yue took a long, intentionally loud slurp from her box of the Kanto-exclusive megalixer drink. "You've got a stand at Comiket and you want to defend someone's reputation against being labeled an otaku?"

"It's nothing against them! People can be pretty mean to them, though, and you're my friend."

"And you expect to find an actual bully in 3-A?"

Haruna chuckled and conceded the point, although Negi though that Paru might not do so as easily if she knew about Evangeline (even though she was pretty nice for a hemovore).

"This is an incredible view," came the matronly voice of a student Negi didn't know very well. Number Twenty-One, Naba Chizuru, leaned against the railing of the stage. Her generous assets pressed against the wood as she gazed over the trees that surrounded Kiyomizu-dera and into Kyoto. "You can see the entire city from here."

"Wow!" he exclaimed as he followed her lead and leaning nearly over the edge in his excitement. The city was on a scale beyond Mahora—buildings stretched out in a seemingly endless sprawl, the mountains in the distance the only sight not covered by the urban spread. He tried to imagine what it would look like from this vantage point at night—millions of lights glowing like stars to make a giant streak of colored fire in the darkness.

The wood under his hands was smoothed from centuries of wear, and Negi thought he could feel the quiet faith of ages in the solid surface. It was firm and old, in that gentle way of ancient architecture. It reminded him of why he liked to collect antiques so much. He wished his sister could be here to see this.

A hand grabbed the collar of Negi's suit and yanked him back onto the floor of the stage. "Don't get so caught up in the sights that you fall off, Negi! Jeez, if I wasn't here to take care of you…"

"Ahaha… sorry, Asuna-san. Thank you," he said, his cheeks red from embarrassment. "Still, it really is beautiful, isn't it?"

The wind carried the scent of blossoming spring growth and the promise of life, here where nature encompassed the shrine. Leaves shook and whispered as the air coiled through them, almost in reverence of the site, and the lovely green of trees spread out until it touched the city. Like a soft caress the breeze brushed lightly against him, a gentle touch that made his own sky magic shift and reply in those loving sounds that composed the ever-whispering wind.

A petal drifted until it alighted upon the rail of the stage, a pale pink that could almost be called white. The cherry blossoms had bloomed nearly a month ago—Negi supposed that all that remained now were stray blossoms and lonely little petals like this, floating about.

The slightest of wafting winds blew and the petal floated away, slowly carried by invisible eddies until it crossed in front of Konoka, who tried to grab it out of the air.

Sakurazaki Setsuna stood some distance behind her, almost hidden behind a pillar due to some need to separate herself from her classmates. He couldn't help but be reminded of Chamo's allegations—she did seem suspicious, but wasn't she still his student? There had to be an explanation that wasn't as condemning as his familiar's.

Asuna's two lengths of hair blew gently to the side as she watched the charming scenery. "Yeah… it looks like something you'd find on a gift card, or on a painting in a museum. I sort of wish I could take this image home with me." She blinked, then smacked herself in the face. "Wait, I can. Hey, is anyone else taking pictures?"

Actually, a fair amount of the class had already done so, even the other Baka Rangers. Asuna grumbled for a moment about everyone else stealing her idea before pulling out her phone out.

"If you're about to take a photo, could you wait a moment?" Naruto spoke lightly and smiled, but something about him made Negi uneasy.

"Oh, uh, sure. What for?"

The blond boy slipped his backpack off his shoulder to fish around in it. "Evangeline sent a doll along with me, and I'm sure she wanted me to take pictures of it in all sorts of places." There was something in Naruto's eyes—or maybe something absent—that was unpleasant to watch, like he was trying too hard to make himself enjoy the visit.

He wanted to ask about it, but that would go against what he had said back in the train. Negi held his tongue, but couldn't help worrying about his friend. Something was upsetting him.

"Don't you dare. I'll cut off your hands in your sleep and choke you with them," whispered the small green-haired puppet when Naruto pulled her out of the bag. Although quiet to avoid being heard by the nearby mundanes, there was no mistaking the viciousness in her tone.

A nervous sweat beaded on Asuna's brow. "Sh-she sounds like she's got Eva's crazy and more wrapped in an even tinier package. I don't think that's a good idea…"

The boy holding the doll smiled brightly and propped up the marionette up on the wooden rail. "Of course it is. Hey, everyone! Want to help take pictures of Evangeline's doll, since she couldn't come on the trip?"

A number of girls squee'd and ran over to help. Naruto stepped away to let them (wo)manhandle the doll with a smug look on his face while Chachazero tried very hard not to scream obscenities at him. Flashes of light occasionally came from the crowd as the posed the murderous puppet.

Negi's opinion of Naruto went up another notch. Not that his opinion of Naruto was _bad_ (because it wasn't at all!), but that was still quite clever. If… cruel. He didn't know if he had it in him to throw a poor sentient being to the mercy of the class like that. Although Chachazero probably deserved it.

"That's so nice of you!"

"I wish I thought of that. We should take some for Zazie and Chachamaru, too!"

"Eva likes toys? I had no idea."

"It's cute, but doesn't it look sort of… I mean, the eyes are kind of… don't you think…?"

"Yeah, it's sort of eerie."

"Right, she is, but could you step out of the way so we can get a photo too?" It took another minute to shoo the class out of Chachazero's way, and if she were able to without revealing magic she would probably be scowling furiously. Which was, of course, why Naruto had called them over in the first place.

It only took a couple seconds for Asuna to take the shot, which left Naruto rubbing at his chin in thought. Negi had a bad feeling about things when his eyes narrowed into mischievous slits that he could only describe as 'fox-like'. "You know, this seems sort of plain. Let's take a more interesting one!"

Then he stepped forwards, slid his fingers up Chachazero's side, and flicked her on the forehead. For a brief moment she teetered on the edge, before falling off the stage and into the woods below.

"FFUUUUUUUUuuuuuuucck—hrrk!"

He was going to die. Evangeline was going to cut Naruto into pieces and feed them to… well, herself. Negi felt the beginnings of panic start to stir (for the sixth time that day. At the least).

"Who said that?"

"Naruto-sensei, why would you do that to Eva-chan's doll? That's so mean!"

"Oh shit, you totally broke it. You better go get it now."

"E-eh? What, no, you got it all wrong!" Naruto said, waving his hands as he tried to defend himself from the angry glares of the girls. "Look!"

Makie gasped and pointed below. "It's floating!"

"Did it get stuck in the air?"

"I feel like someone should make a 'yo momma' joke about that."

"Stop kidding around and pay attention to the doll soaring through the air!"

Naruto chuckled and pulled up a hand. Something just barely visible trailed below it, reflecting the sunlight. "Not quite. It's just wire, see? I tied it around her before I tossed her off. Now we can take a picture of her looking like she's falling, but without damaging her. For a funny keepsake."

Negi suspected it was more a matter of upsetting Chachazero than making good memories. But more importantly, when did he tie it on? Was it right before he pushed her? Negi hadn't noticed at all.

A snapshot later and the puppet was pulled up—he was mildly amused to find that the wire had been wrapped around her neck like a noose. Disturbed, but amused, and only more so once Naruto set her upon his head like a demented hat. Despite the fact that she wasn't precisely designed to balance on heads, Naruto seemed to have no difficulty keeping her there. Although his face did take on a haunted cast, and his eyes constantly darted up as though to make sure she hadn't drawn a weapon.

This close proximity, of course, started a furious whisper war between the two of them, which only Negi was close enough to catch. Or at least he hoped he was the only one that close, or he'd be turned into an ermine! Unfortunately, the two of them ignored his renewed panic.

"I'm going to kill you for that. Just so you know."

"You didn't get hurt! And you were going to try to kill me anyways," Naruto cast back.

"I… that's true, isn't it?" she wondered aloud, obviously having never considered that before. After a moment she found her answer, one which nearly broke Negi's glasses from the speed of his facepalm. "I'll make it hurt more, though."

"Look, there's no way a guy can just carry around a doll! Who does that?" Naruto said in defense of his masculinity. "Now they have a reason for you to be out here as long as we take a few pictures. You could have stayed in the bag instead."

"Pffft. You just wanted to find a way to hang me. Your head's comfy, by the way."

"I hate you." Oh no. They were getting a little louder.

Chachazero tilted her head to give him a skeptical stare, which sent Negi into fearful paroxysms when one of the girls cast a curious glance their way. "Mm hm. Hey, since you've got some wire, have you ever considered learning puppetry?"

Naruto looked surprised by the apparent non sequitur (although Negi wondered if that wasn't what the doll hadn't been intending to ask since the beginning of the conversation). "What?"

"Weeeeeellllll… You know, Mistress is the most skilled puppet master in the world, and I know a lot, being a doll. I could probably teach you enough for you to figure it out, even if you're using something other than magic. And you'd even have the perfect subject on hand to use it on—me!"

His face paled and he looked a little nauseous at the very thought. "Thank you for giving me a wonderful reason to never ever even consider learning how to use puppets. I think I'd rather die."

Chachazero looked a little dispirited at his words. "Aww… you're no fun."

Negi might have gone into a terror-induced seizure had they continued, but Naruto decided to move nearer to the students. This handily silenced her and prevented Negi from developing a life-threatening aneurism.

"… not a single nail used to build the entire temple."

Yue had continued to be a font of information while he was occupied. Negi regretted that he had missed what she had to say, although maybe he would be able to get her to repeat it later. He was fascinated by the place—Kiyomizu-dera itself was designated as a national treasure, but the complex was large—what else could lie with, historical artifacts with histories of their own? Negi would love to see them, and to hear Yue's comments on them equally so.

As could be expected, not all of the class was as interested in her knowledge of shrine esoterica. "What about love charms? Do they sell those?" Driven by some inhuman need, Yūna asked a question that sent a chill down Negi's spine.

"If you're looking for romance, we should go down to the Jishu Shrine. There should be a path over there. It is famous amongst women for its ability to predict love."

No.

This caught the attention of two girls (more, technically, but most notably two specific ones), who loudly voiced their approval of this.

Oh no.

"P-p-predicting… !? Ah, Negi-sensei!" breathed a red-faced Ayaka as she caught him by the arm just as he started running away, "Why don't you come down with me? Won't it be fun to get our fortunes told? Together? About love?"

"I-I don't think—"

Makie grabbed his other arm and began to pull on him. "Come on, Negi-kun, me too~! I want to see what this love fortune's all about, and you've got to help me!

And thus were Negi's last moments as he was dragged away by cruel, feminine hands.

* * *

><p>"Ahaha! Come on, Negi-kun~. Why so slow?"<p>

Makie laughed and gave another gentle tug on her sensei's hands before pulling away from him. He followed of course, because Negi was wonderful and dependable like that! She knew that he would, so she didn't have to hang on his arm once he started going with them down the path to the shrine dedicated to Ōkuninushi. But clinging to him felt so nice that she didn't want to let go.

Still, they were almost to the Jishu Shrine, and she wanted to have a look around! It was amazing how much Yue knew about it. Makie knew she was smart, but she had no idea she was _that_ smart. She really was amazing!

Makie knew it had been a good idea to go and ring up the Baka Rangers as a club. Yue was lazy, which was really the only reason she had bad enough grades to take supplemental lessons. If she ever tried harder, then the Baka Rangers would be down a member and that would be terrible! But she wasn't worried about it, because they were a club now and so wouldn't fall apart so easily.

Maybe she was smart too, for coming up with such a plan? Ahahahaha, what a silly thing to think about oneself. Nope, not her.

She hummed to herself as she skipped over the last steps into the Jishu Shrine. "Uwah… there's a lot of people here!" she had to say, because there really was. Well, it wasn't precisely _crowded_, but there were certainly a number of folks lined up to give their respects to the god of love and wandering along the sides of the shrine. The walkways around it were lined with all sorts of stalls selling talismans and love charms.

But luckily—perhaps because Sakurako had come with them?—there was no one cluttering up the middle of the shrine, the most important part.

And also the slightly scary part. "You… you said we had to walk all the way across? Without opening our eyes?" Worry wasn't something that came naturally to Makie, but she felt herself getting a bit nervous. "That's got to be twenty meters! What if we don't make it? Do we never find love again?"

She was too young to be loveless! She still hadn't even done any lovey-dovey stuff with Negi yet!

Yue chuckled and shook her head, an amused smile on her face. But not _very_ amused, because Baka Black didn't emote much. "It isn't quite that far, Makie. And you won't have to worry about what happens if you fail. Although someone who successfully walks from one of the love stones to the other with their eyes closed will definitely find romance, someone who can't is simply destined to find it the old-fashioned way."

"Ah, that's right, isn't it?"

"I agree with Makie though, that's way too far!"

"So romantic~," someone said, hearts audible in their voice.

Each stone was large—the one closest to her reached almost to Fumika's hip—and was wrapped around with rope, from which hung zigzagging paper _shide_ tassels. It really was quite a distance to the other side. But she had to try, or she'd never be able to catch Negi!

She took a careful glance at her competition as her fellows huddled around Negi. She longed to do the same, but their future together was on the line and she couldn't afford to be distracted. Well, maybe she could be a little?

"Well, as class representative I think it is only natural that I, Yukihiro Ayaka, go first."

Or not. There could be no mistakes when the war of love had begun! "Wait for me! You can't start without me!"

"A-a-and… um… me. I-I want to try, too." Bookstore? What was Nodoka doing here? Makie didn't think she had the… physical ability to compete in this battle between rivals of love. But the meek, shyly eager eye that stared out from behind Nodoka's protective barrier of hair was hard to say no to, so she didn't comment.

The three competitors took their positions, Makie using those last moments too survey her audience. Well, the most important part of her audience, which is to say Negi. He was so cute in that suit of his!

But there were so many girls by him. Oh, maybe she'd be destined to find love the slow, normal way if she didn't reach the stone in time, but if someone else _did_ manage to touch it… Makie knew who they'd go after. They'd steal him out from under her before she ever managed to get him under her!

Makie's face made a passable impression of a tomato as she furiously tried to unthink her last thoughts. They were very bad and very distracting!

Many other people would have been unsuccessful (in fact, nearly every human being would). But Makie was one of those rare few who were quite functionally brilliantly stupid, and she successfully unthunk her thinking. It was a skill that many people who delved into the internet would envy, if they knew about it.

Happily unaware of her own scandalous thoughts, she continued to exercise her eyes before they had to be closed. Negi was caught between Kakizaki and the Narutaki twins, and seemingly trying his best to ignore them both as they stuck to his arms. She pouted a little at the sight.

He was so popular, and the battle for his heart was so heated! It was hard to actually make any progress, no matter how hard one tried. With so many enemies and rivals ready to strike at any given moment, it was all but impossible to actually get closer to him without the others taking the same opportunity themselves. Like she had when Class Rep tried to come down here with Negi.

But she wouldn't really say she was _worried_. What happened, happened, even if she didn't want it to, so there wasn't any reason to be so concerned. No matter how much she wanted Negi for herself. Still…

She pulled her gaze from the object of her affections with the full intent of focusing upon the upcoming race towards the love stone as Nodoka and Ayaka were. But her eyes happened to fall upon her other teacher, and she found herself unable to.

The other boy, Naruto. He was so… alone, especially when compared to Negi. Why was that? He stood apart from the others, with that doll sitting on his head (which was… sort of cute, maybe? The choice of puppets made it sort of weird, though). Asakura was the only person by him, and she seemed to be there to ask him questions.

Hm… Negi was surrounded by girls. But Naruto, who had his own style of cuteness, didn't seem to have anyone chasing after his affections. So that meant… all she had to do to have Negi to herself was…

Close her eyes! Obviously, if she noticed that she still had her eyes open, and if she had her eyes open she couldn't go from one love stone to the other with her eyes closed. What a mistake that was! Makie lightly rapped herself on the head for being so dense.

"Are you ready _yet_, Nodoka?"

"N—" the girl shied away and seemed to retreat into herself before the stares directed her direction. "I-I mean, yes. I'm ready. I think."

This exchange pulled her attention back to the matter at hand—the all-important race for love. Ayaka stepped forwards, confidently sweeping back her hair as she took up position in front of the love stone. Whoops. Makie still hadn't closed her eyes. She fixed that. "Well, if we're all set to begin? Since this isn't a race, let's just get going."

The entire world was dark, but she could hear the footsteps of the Class Rep as she took those first sneaky steps. That was low! Not a race? Who was she kidding? That was just an excuse to skip the countdown! But Makie wasn't about to be defeated by that kind of dirty trick, and she took a long leap forwards.

It seemed poor Nodoka wasn't very good at this. Over the generic encouragements of her classmates, Yue's voice rung out to keep her friend from running into bystanders. "You've gone too far left! Don't run into the old lady! No, you have to go_ left_!"

"I'm putting fifty yen on Makie!"

"Who put Bookstore in the way? Nodoka, you're going to trip! Move!"

"Two hundred yen on the Class Rep!"

"That's too much left. Not that much! That's—no, that's not good either! That's a _wall_, Nodoka!"

She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the others, imagining herself on the balance beam in gymnastics. Well, she focused in _rhythmic_ gymnastics, but the club covered all sorts and Coach Ninomiya could be pretty harsh when it came to cross-training. Even though she couldn't actually see where she was going, she could do this. She could win.

A quiet, confident laugh crashed against her ears like wealthy seafoam. "Really, it's a pity, Makie-san. I'm certain you would have done quite well otherwise, but I'm afraid that you really don't stand a chance with me here."

"All those black belts I talk about? I didn't buy those. Now, behold the pinnacle my training! _Yukihiro Ayaka Style Secret Technique: Romantic All-Seeing Eye_!"

"Woah! What is the Class Rep doing?"

"Nodokaaaa!"

"Is this… is what a master martial artist can really do!?"

"Hm… 400 yen on Bookstore!"

"Sakurako, don't joke right now. This is serious!"

Makie ducked her head, expecting laser beams to come flying out of the giant mecha that the Class Rep had surely transformed into, but no such event occurred. Instead, she heard something far more terrifying—Ayaka began to run.

She tried to step in that direction, but now she was unsure. If she didn't pick up the pace herself, she would lose, but if she did that she might not go straight anymore. And she wasn't clever enough to figure out where Ayaka was by listening to her footsteps.

Catching her lower lip in her teeth, Makie made the biggest decision of her life. Of her entire fourteen years of life. She cracked open her eyes. Well, one eye, just a little bit—and she didn't even look at the love stone! Just at Class Rep. Maybe it was cheating, but if so she would still get half the luck as long as she got there first. But she had to get there before Ayaka did, no matter what!

Her own pace picked up as the two of them rushed towards the love stone at a sprinter's pace. How was she going so straight? Makie had to voice her objections to the Class Rep. "You're cheating! You've got to have your eyes open to be going so straight, don't you?"

Ayaka laughed at her, her aristocratic laughter light and mocking despite being broken by the movement of running. "Hardly. I won't ruin my chances with a certain N***-sensei so easily, so don't get your hopes up! I'm afraid I have to leave you behind now, for it is now time for my love to blossom into reality!"

And with that, she began to run _even faster_. Makie moaned and pushed harder, trying to force more speed into her legs. She refused to be left behind! No matter what, she wasn't going to let Negi be taken away from her just like that!

Hey… she couldn't let Negi be taken away from her! That was an idea! Her classmates were trying to steal him, but there was someone else they could steal inst—

"Kyaaaa!"

"AAAAH!"

Before the thought could continue, something crumbled beneath her feet. Suddenly groundless, the two girls tangled amongst one another as they fell into a pit, their eyes forced open from the shock as surely as the screams were torn out of their lungs.

Makie moaned as she tried to sit up, but her limbs were caught up with the Class Rep's. With both of them trying the same thing, they ended up just being clumsy. "Owwie…"

A dim glow against the wall caught her and Ayaka's eyes. A simple piece of paper clung to the edge of the pit fluttered in the breezeless spot, a simple kanji written upon its surface in broad, firm strokes. **従****い**

_Obey_.

How… odd. She couldn't pull her eyes away.

_Obey_.

Well, why would she want to look elsewhere? It was strangely beautiful, the most perfect work of calligraphy worked onto that tag of paper. Makie heard and felt her classmates coming over to the pit they had fallen into.

_Obey_. The paper suddenly began to tear into bits all on its own, but she wasn't very surprised. Not even when the shreds of paper became frogs and began to leap over them to get out of the hole, although for some reason all her friends started making a ruckus. How silly of them.

"It's—it's those hell frogs!"

"Get away, get away! Ew, they're so gros—oh God! It just _died_, did you see that? Where did the knife come from?"

Negi came up to her, and Makie smiled perkily at him when he reached a hand down for her. "Are you alright, Makie-san?" She beamed that he was asking about her, even when he asked the same for the Class Rep a moment later, and took his hand. The pit was just deep enough that they would have difficulty getting out of it without help.

Behind her savior, Nodoka had somehow managed to stumble onto the love stone. Maybe that should have been important to her, but it wasn't. Not anymore.

"Congratulations, Nodoka, you reached it. And the only help you needed was to keep you from running someone over."

"I… I did it?" She looked more surprised than anyone else by her own success.

Makie gave Negi a cheerful smile and blinked. Behind her eyelids a beautiful word burned with quiet fire. **従****い** _Obey_. But how?

Asuna crossed her arms and shook her head. "A hole in the middle of a shrine? The cause is pretty obvious, Class Rep. Your attempt to cheat in love has angered the gods."

The fiery redhead raised an eyebrow when Ayaka didn't rise to her needling, instead replying with a mellow, "I didn't cheat," as she looked this way and that, trying to find something.

Makie understood the feeling, turning herself as she tried to search for… for… she didn't know what. _Obey_. But she had to find it. Although… "Well, I did sort of have my eyes open, just a little bit. Maybe that's why?"

"Pssh. As though a pissed-off spirit would enact vengeance through such an obviously man-made trap," said Naruto as he came up to them, having shooed away the frogs as they spoke. He must have seen something in her eye, because he peered into them. "Makie, are you… alright? You look a little out of it. Did you hit your head?"

She gave him a bemused smile, although it may have drifted a few inches to the side of his face. Had Makie paid attention, she would have noticed him share a worried glance with Negi, but she had noticed a sign. It was a very normal sign, but it meant something important.

"Now that we've established that I, Yukihiro Ayaka, would never sink so low as to _cheat_, what say you we continue this tour? There's still the Otowa Waterfall to go to, is there not?"

Ayaka stole the words right out of Makie's mouth! Not her exact words, because Ayaka said them more elegantly, and she didn't steal them directly out of her mouth because that sounded rather painful, but that was what Makie was going to say! She huffed and crossed her arms petulantly. She had wanted to be the one to make everyone go to The Place and do The Thing.

"But what about me? I didn't get to have my destiny in love told," whimpered Murakami Natsumi from behind Naruto's shoulder, her tear-filled eyes the size of traffic lights.

This was bad! Natsumi would stay and— _Obey._ No, actually. It wasn't. She knew what to do. Makie giggled. "Well, you can't exactly walk between the love stones with a giant pit in the way. So there isn't really any choice but to move on, is there?"

Natsumi looked a little devastated at that, but the word behind Makie's eyelids expected that. "But don't worry! After all, the Otowa Waterfall is good for love too~. If you drink from one of its three streams, you definitely get blessed with something good. And one of those good things is true love!"

The freckled redhead perked up a little at that, a hopeful smile on her face. "R-really?"

"Eeyup!"

"I can attest that it is, in fact, the truth. Although... Makie, I had no idea you actually knew anything about the temple." Yue's normally muted expression had dropped into an openmouthed gape, and even if that hadn't been enough her voice clearly sounded out her surprise.

Normally Makie would giggle at the display, but it wasn't quite as funny as it should have been. She needed to take her to the Waterfall. Makie managed a soft laugh, but it didn't sound very real. "I don't."

She didn't know why Yue needed to ponder that so much. _It_ told her, obviously. They should know that. She left the two of them as the entire class began to head back towards Kiyomizu, and gleefully darted between her classmates as she tried to tell them about the future of love that would await them. Ayaka did much the same, though in a calmer, more leader-ly sort of way. Occasionally their eyes would meet and they would nod, recognizing their shared purpose.

_Her_ purpose, which she was sharing with Ayaka. Just to be specific.

It wouldn't be right to say they got their as a group, but eventually the awkward and disjointed trail of 3-A reached the Otowa Waterfall. A graceful arch formed over the stone walkway, as grey as the stone wall it emerged from. Streams fell from three even, grooved projections below its top, falling past the walkway where visitors to the shrine eagerly caught the water in tin cups with long handles. What wasn't taken by those hopeful for the future plunged into the square pool below, the bright reflection of which seemed barely disturbed at all by the falling streams. There were small shrines by the waterfall, much as those which could be found throughout the entire temple complex, and where a shrine can be found so to can those who would pray to it.

It was beautiful and impressive, and it might even have moved grumpy Hasegawa Chisame. But that Makie had no eyes for it, only vaguely taking note of its appearance and far gladder to see that the most recent group of people was leaving than appreciative of its charm. The witnesses were going away. She smiled and closed her eyes to enjoy the moment as a pulse of pleasure coursed through her, warm and rushing from eyes.

**従****い** _Obey._

Class Rep took the lead, with Makie following only a few steps behind. Neither of them could keep smiles off their faces, knowing they were so close, knowing that they were obeying as they were meant to. The shrine suffered a ruckus such as it likely had never heard in all its centuries as the ravening hordes of Class 3-A descended upon it, and in moments there were teenage girls everywhere.

Well, not on the roof. That was very important, and very lucky for both of them.

The blond class representative waited until a moment of relative quiet before speaking out in a loud voice. "The water that promises love to its drinker is the one on the left, is it not?"

Kū Fei, who had already taken a cup and a hearty gulp, only barely avoided spitting what was still in her mouth all over her friends. "L-left? Is sure is one on left? B-but have already had one from other side!" Chao shook her head and rubbed her friend's back sympathetically.

"That won't be a problem," Makie promised, her voice as light and happy as possible. It was an assuring voice, one that was confident and held a something else that Sasaki Makie's tone never had in her entire life. "It's alright for you to drink from two of them. But you should really be sure to drink from the stream of love! That's too important to leave up to luck, you know!"

Standing below them by the border of the pond, Yue nodded slowly. "That's… correct. You can drink from two, but drinking from all three will bring you bad fortune. The one on the left is true love as Class Rep said, the one in the middle grants wisdom, and the one on the right that Kū Fei just had will give you good health. Still, Makie—how do you _know_ that? You even said you didn't pay attention to this sort of thing."

She smiled. _Obey_. "Yue, aren't you going to get something to drink? Even you have to have some hopes for a sweet romance."

"'Even me?' What's that supposed to mean? Anyways, I'm taking pictures of you all drinking for my collection of temple photos. I've already picked out what I wanted before we even arrived." Makie didn't respond to Yue's indignant stare, as she had the rest of the class to work on.

Girls clustered around the left side of the Otowa Waterfall, nearly climbing on top of one another as they pushed out their tin cups to capture as much of the precious water as they could. Makie and Ayaka both got a drink for themselves, driven to imbibe of the precious nectar. The sensation of it sliding down her throat of was heavenly, and she closed her eyes in bliss. _Obey_.

Naba Chizuru gasped in surprise as she lifted the tin of water from her lips. "That is… surprisingly wonderful. I had no idea water could taste this good."

"Could this be the flavor of wishes being granted?"

"If a little is this good, it must be even more effective the more we drink," Ayaka suggested, and of course this made perfect sense to all who heard it. This was so exciting! Makie couldn't restrain a giggle.

But it wasn't enough for just this third of the class to imbibe of the water of love. Not nearly. _Obey_. Stepping away, she began to mingle, talking animatedly amongst her classmates as she subtly or not-so-subtly convinced them of how great the water was. Or simply how good it tasted, if nothing else worked.

She skipped over to Hakase and Chao, who were happily chatting with the pleasantly plump Satsuki. And _not drinking_. Why were they not drinking? They should drink. It was nice to drink. It was obedient to drink. She knew it was a good thing to make them drink, so she went to their side and tried to serenade them with the wonders of love.

"You like love, right?"

"What?" Blank stares.

"You should drink from the water on the left for love."

"Yeah, we heard. Thanks."

Perhaps she had not been clear enough. "So go and drink!"

Chao and Hakase shared an inscrutable look. "We… don't think we'll be drinking. We'll leave out the discussion on how it's most likely pure superstition, but we don't know how exactly this water works (if it can even grant something as difficult to define as 'wisdom' or 'love' in the first place). There's more, but suffice to say that we'll just be watching."

That sounded very final. Makie slumped, knowing that she didn't have anything to argue against such unkind irrationality, but brightened quickly. "So what about you, Sat-chan? Do you want to fall in love? You're not as paranoid as these girls, right?"

Makie's smile was met by one in return. Satsuki stepped forwards, looking thoughtfully towards the waterfall. Well, I already had a bit from the right—you should too, Makie. Your body is very important and you only have one to keep healthy. Makie thought this would be all, and was about to repeat what she had said earlier when Satsuki continued in her quiet, thoughtful voice. But I don't know if that's what I'd pick for my second one. I think having the wisdom to make good choices in your life might be more important.

"But you're already wise, Sat-chan! You give really good advice and even the teachers listen when you start talking. Don't sell yourself short!" she said in her most supportive tone, her eyes as wide as her smile and sparkling twice as much. "Everyone thinks you're incredible, even stuffy Eva-chan."

Evangeline…

A symbol glowed behind her eyelids, and traceries of glowing fire flowed from that shimmering form, reaching past her retinas and into her mind. From there Makie could _feel_ the demanding heat, following already created paths in her mind as water follows a channel. Paths, she knew, that had been created in an older servitude.

But what? Makie certainly didn't remember anything like THAT!

—"_And using your classmates like puppets? I can't believe you'd do something that wicked," ground out her cute little sensei. The four girls sat obediently at the feet of their lady, their mistress, their goddess. Would she let them play with him? They wanted to so badly._

_Mocking laughter. "'Wicked?' Didn't I tell you, sensei? I _am_ an evil wizard. Coming here alone was a mistake. If you thought you were scared last time, you're in for a rude awakening…_—

That was… why was she—?

_**OBEY**_! And kanji briefly flared like fire behind her eyes. What was what? Nothing. There was nothing but the need to _obey_. She gave the crowd a once-over to look for anyone else who hadn't had anything to drink of the delectable liquid. More of her classmates had partaken, which was no surprise. The twins, the cheerleaders—most of the sports club members, and other girls besides. Ayaka had done the same as she.

She sidled up to Mana, who stood apart to watch over the class with an amused smile. "Aren't you going to have some?"

Makie had occasionally found the taller girl to be intimidating, but as supported as Makie now was she knew that she had nothing to fear in all the world. Mana glanced down briefly at her before focusing her gazing on the water once again. "What, are you trying to sell something?"

Ayah! Suspicion was such an unpleasant thing. _Obey_. "What do you mean? It's just that I don't think I've ever heard of you trying to get a boyfriend, or even going on a date at all," Makie said as she tried to sound like a friend. "Isn't that sort of lonely?"

A sigh, and the dark girl directed her attention fully on Makie. "I don't have the same problem all of you have—wanting to find love, or hoping to receive the same in return. That is something I've already experienced."

If Haruna hadn't been helping herself to the fountain of love (which actually a fountain), her rumor-radar would have been pinging like a hair-thingy possessed. Which it might be.

This was not something that Makie was mentally prepared to simply let be, even though she still had to prepare the victims. _Obey_. But maybe she could use this? Her voice dropped into gossip mode and took on a false whisper, which was perfectly easy to hear but sounded sneaky. "Somebody?" she quietly squealed, even though the burning runes behind her eyes told her what she needed to know. "Who is he? Shame on you for hiding him from us like this. Is he hot? That's why you want to keep him secret, isn't it?"

"Eh?" Mana's face looked somewhat like that of someone who opened up their refrigerator for a meal only to find an axe murderer sitting politely inside of it, asking for them to close the door. "Y-you what? No, I'm not—"

"When did you meet him? Where is he? What's he like? You haven't already taken Negi-kun from us, have you? I won't forgive you if you have, even if you are my classmate!"

"Stop. That's not what I meant to…wait, _Negi-sensei_? Why did you even—"

"Is he a reliable guy? Does he attend Mahora, or is he from one of the other schools in the city? Maybe you have a long-distance relationship? _Is 'he' actually a she?!_"

"_NO_!" With a shout, Mana's composure finally cracked. "Enough of this! That was a long time ago. He isn't… that is to say, there is no relationship of any type now, so your questions don't mean anything."

The individual in question hadn't mattered. What he was to Mana did. Makie smiled guilelessly. "Aw… that's terrible! It sounded like you really liked him earlier, but there's no one now?"

"I'm not seeing anyone, no. But I'm not really trying to, either," Mana answered with crossed arms, visibly trying to collect her cool after her tiny explosion earlier. It was a good thing she was normally a calm person, or her temper would have been much worse. But the words that smoldered like glowing coals couldn't wait for her to reestablish her composure, so Makie struck again before she found her footing.

Her eyes were wide, with the natural shine of an innocent girl. _Obey_. "But if the only lovey-dovey stuff you found was in the past, and you don't want to drink the water now… isn't that a little like you're giving up on your future?"

Silence reigned supreme in the area around them as Mana simply stood and stared at Makie. No, that wasn't it—rather, it was like Mana's eyes were looking someplace else and she just happened to be in the way.

"You're wrong. That… that isn't it at all," she said in a voice that wasn't trembling only because of Mana's self-control. "I'm just holding on to memories—that isn't the same as giving up."

"But if you aren't moving forwards, is there actually a difference?"

This time she really did stare at Makie, as though she had become some strange creature right before her eyes. "You're pretty persistent, aren't you?" Then, so suddenly that Makie pulled away, Mana laughed. "Thanks for caring, Makie. If it'll make you feel better, I'll go have some."

Makie smiled. Victim count now surpassed one half of the class and multiple priority targets (priority? Why? _Obey_. It didn't matter). A warmth pulsed through her, alighting her senses with a nameless pleasure to tell her that the time had come. _Obey_. She looked towards Ayaka, whose eyes were closed in quiet bliss.

The brief wait until Mana took her cup of water was agonizing—she was a shrine maiden, she should know how important these things were! It seemed like it took forever for her to drink, but once she did they began. _Obey_. It was the most important thing they would ever do in their life!

**従****い **_Obey_. The glowing syllables behind their eyelids began to _burn_, no longer like embers but a roaring inferno of such majesty that it was all Makie could do not to cry out. _Obey_. Fire blazed through their minds and bodies as the two catalysts reached the culmination of their usefulness. _Obey_!

_Obey_. Their mouths gaped open as the magic tilted their heads upwards to the ceiling, gasping as molten heat rushed through their veins to set every nerve afire with pain and pleasure and _awareness_ such as the two had never imagined. _Obey_. Above them, atop the roof, concealed by magic to hide it from the gaze of those who would remove it before it could fulfill its purpose, was the most amazing thing Makie could ever be proud of contributing to. _Obey_.

_Obey_.

Carried by invisible winds _Obey_, power drained from Makie and _Obey_ Ayaka and the writing on a tag of paper rewrote itself. _Obey Obey Obey_. They gasped as energy drained from them, and _Obey_ the words behind their eyes began to dim as its power _Obey_ served as fuel to power a transformation above their heads. Words of concealment changed, each stroke erasing itself and being inked anew as though under an invisible brush. **罠**

And the trap caught its prey.

_Obey_.

A casket faded into visibility on the roof, revealing that it had been feeding its contents into the one flow of water. A pulse of magic stretched out as it appeared, dying the stream red—as well as the pool below, and the lips of everyone who had drunk from it, as the essential nature of the liquid was restored from its watery disguise.

_obey_.

Surprised spluttering erupted across the platform as the flavor of alcohol abruptly appeared in the mouths of all who had drunk from the waterfall of love. Mana dropped the tin she was holding, which fell into the scarlet pool below as Mana spun around as though to confront an enemy—but her legs didn't work right, making her stumble and collapse to the ground. The effects struck swiftly, far quicker than the natural process of intoxication would have taken.

_obey. obey_._ ob_… and behind her eyes the letters and _heat_ and paths and _light_ and _**fire**_ finally faded away, consumed entirely by the spellwork performed here. Makie blinked.

Eugh, her mouth tasted horrible! What had she—? Ah! There was no time to wonder about that, what about the race?!

She looked around wildly, only to see her classmates stumble over one another. Her eyes were blurring for some reason, and as she tried to take a step she felt her balance slipping away as elusively as a dragonfly from a child's grasp. When had they come here? This… this wasn't the shrine of the love stones. Was this the result of running with her eyes closed? Er… mostly closed?

Wow, she was so off track. There was no way she'd win like this.

She tried to make sense of it, but her head _hurt_, more than anything ever had in her life. Her eyes too, like her eyelids were having a thousand migraines at once.

"Where are *hic* we"? Makie hiccupped, but no one nearby was in a state to answer. Oh. Hehehe. There were two of Negi now! How cute… although she could do without a double of everyone else. It was loud and her head was _hurting_. A moan came from not too far away, and when she turned her head she could see Class Rep curling up in a ball with her head in her hands.

Like a tidal wave, the effects of inebriation worsened—although Makie had no way to know that's what had happened to her. She giggled, then gasped as her head creaked. A nap seemed like a really good idea, and she crawled towards the adorably panicky Negi to take one with him. But she stumbled and her head landed on something soft, and… well, it was pretty comfy here, too!

But… but, before she fell into a drunken stupor, stray thoughts drifted through her mind. And Makie wondered why she wanted to desperately take a shower and scrub and scrub and scrub until her skin was red, and why she felt like she wanted to vomit until there was nothing left of her. That was odd.

Then she slept and dreamed blissfully happy dreams, and such odd thoughts were no more.

* * *

><p>Setsuna didn't join in with the panicked attempts to wake her fallen classmates or placate nosy teachers looking in on 3-A. She stood apart from the group as she always had, quietly observing.<p>

By the time she had noticed the trap, it had been too late. She hadn't felt the invisible barrel at all, despite the threat it posed and the type of magic used to hide it. That was a weakness in her training which she would need to remedy.

She glared at the blonde sensei as he flipped himself up onto the roof. What convenient timing, for him to show up directly before the trip. To show up right before the trip, then befriend Negi—which allowed him to go to that room, with Asuna and _her_, on a regular basis.

How remarkable, that this person just so happened to have unusual skills, and practiced using the weapons of a shinobi. A ninja, mercenaries known for doing even immoral deeds so long as the price was right. That such a person appeared immediately before the trip to Kyoto—the trip to the home region of the Kansai Magic Association…

Her eyes narrowed at the threat who "examined" the casket that had felled half the class. It all lined up too evenly. He wasn't something she could afford to ignore—that she didn't notice until she read his movements in the train car was another failing on her part. And there was that feeling, repelling her even as it called for her to step closer…

Sakurazaki Setsuna's grip tightened on the strap that supported the sword on her back. For that person's sake, she would have to take care of him before anyone got hurt.

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><p><strong>Author's Note<strong>:

It's interesting, but when I researched the Otowa waterfall it seems that here on the English-speaking side of things no one can decide what exactly those waterfalls are supposed to grant. I've read a lot of different versions of what the three streams would give a drinker. Health/longevity and wisdom/intelligence are the most common to come up. But for the third, I've seen wealth, love, success in studies, longevity (in the same sentence as health!), happiness, and luck.

**Ōkuninushi**: This kami has fairly long story, so I'm not covering it all here. He is a god of love (which, interestingly, I've found mention of mostly in relation to the Jishu shrine), and is also a deity of magic, medicine, farming, and (because of a different reading of his name) power and war. He married the princess of Inaba, Yagami-hime, and his brothers killed him for it. In the underworld, he fell in love with the daughter of Susano-o, Suseri-hime, returned to the world of the living with her, and used her father's weapons to kill his brothers (vastly shortened version). He is actually considered to be a kind and helpful deity, who helped the White Hare of Inaba.

Throughout the Jishu shrine, there are a lot of statues and figurines of Daikoku/Daikokuten, who is one of the Seven Lucky Deities and is considered, amongst other things, to be the god of wealth. The kanji for the beginnings of their names read the same, so Ōkuninushi is often considered to be Daikoku as well.

**Kami**: Of course, I'm saying "god", but this isn't quite accurate. The word "kami" at times refers to beings that those used to Classical mythology would definitely think of as gods, but can also refer to anything down to miniscule nature spirits or simple forces of nature. It might be better to just call them spirits, but some of them would certainly fall under more deific roles.

**Kannon**: She is the bodhisattva of compassion, called originally Guanyin or Guanshiyin before coming to Japan. In English, she is commonly called the "Mercy Goddess". She so strongly attempted to save everyone that her head and her arms shattered, and Amitabha Buddha gave her eleven heads and a thousand arms so she could help everyone in the entire world free themselves from suffering. It is said that she once went to the Buddhist equivalent of hell by taking in the negative karma from her executioner, and when she arrived her mere presence turned that hell into paradise. Although now most often depicted as a woman, she was originally thought of as a man, and some people now make Kannon androgynous.

Yue got her hands on a megalixer somewhere. Sadly, she is currently at full HP and MP so refills nothing, and thus is unaware of the value of what she possesses. In the manga she is seen drinking this in chapter 37. It's only a joke and shout-out, you can stop your wild, probably awesome guesses. Speaking of Yue, she did help Nodoka a bit with the love stone, but that doesn't invalidate Nodoka's destiny for love. According to the love stone's legend, that just means Nodoka will need some help along the way. Yue did a lot of work as she tried to ship Negi and Nodoka together, but could the true meaning be… _saishoudoukin_?!

**Comiket**: The world's largest dōjinshi convention and fair.

Hemovore and hematophage are two different words for the same thing: a creature that feeds on blood.

**Shide**: These are those zigzag papers that keep showing up in all those manga and anime. When on a stick, they typically come with two shide (called a gohei) or more (called an ōnusa or haraegushi), and both have purposes for sacred rituals. When attached to a rice straw rope, it is called a shimenawa, which indicates a blessed or pure area and wards away evil spirits.

Shimenawa are also wrapped around "yorishiro", which are objects or trees that can attract kami and serve as homes for them. If a yorishiro actually holds a spirit, it is called a shintai (it can also be called "mitamashiro" in Jinja Shinto). Even people can be such—one who holds the highest rank in sumo wrestling, the yokozuna, is seen as a living shintai. I'm not certain if the love stones are yorishiro or if the shimenawa are just to protect the stones from evil, but if they are such divine containers then the stones would be specifically called "iwakura".

In 2003, the sakuras bloomed in March 24th. About a week after they start blooming they reach their peak; another, and the blossoms start falling from the trees. Cherry blossoms bloom in a wave across Japan: about January in the southern parts, and as late as May near the north. Kyoto's typically start blossoming in early April/late March.

1,877 is the 288th prime number, and the year that _Anna Karenina_ was published. Although the Sagitta Magica is the most common spell requiring primes, the symbolic power of an indivisible number can play an important function in many other spells.

_**Yukihiro Ayaka Style Secret Technique: Romantic All-Seeing Eye**_: This is an incredibly fancy way of saying that Ayaka did blindfold training when she was taught martial arts so she has a good sense of direction even with without seeing. If this was based off of a more real-manga, she would be a masterful fighter. But here she's… still only a normal human. Just a very good one.

**従****い **_**Obey**_: "Shitagai": A word demanding obedience. The first sign is a kanji for "obey". Shitagau "従" is the basic kanji (although to use it as a verb is "従う", to obey), and the hiragana after (specifically called okurigana when used to elaborate on verb/adjective usage) makes it one of the imperative forms. Japanese has more than one.

**罠 **_**Trap**_: "Wana": One of its meanings is trap or snare. Once you drop off the okurigana from the above kanji, it is written with the same number of strokes—10. Kanji have both 'on' and 'kun' readings, and sometimes more than one… but I'm not going into that.

Please let me know what you think! Reviews are highly appreciated.


	12. Mea Culpa

I own nothing at all related to this story, except for the seed that bound the ideas together into a fanfic. If legal people object, then I don't own that either. Credit goes to the mangaka who created these characters.

We now have a cover image! It's the first bit of art made for this story, created by Adeshark from deviantart (art by her, concept by me (and heavily enhanced by her—there's a reason I'm not a visual artist!)). I suggest you click on the image to see it full size, there are some cool minor details and she did an absolutely amazing job. The image takes place around the MahoraFest Arc. And to avoid a possible misunderstanding, Naruto's eyes aren't because of a kekkei genkai, and the chakra on his fists isn't related to the Jūken. It seemed easy to misinterpret. One of these abilities will show up in just a short number of chapters.

Title comes from the producer Audiomachine, and is Latin for "through my fault." A thanks to Vandenbz for beta reading this chapter.

* * *

><p><span><strong>Chapter 12:<strong>

**Mea Culpa**

"Be careful setting her head down, Naruto-sensei," cautioned Chizuru as the two gently laid Natsumi onto a futon.

His skin crawled and nausea roiled his stomach from the forced contact, but no matter what he thought it was still unavoidable. More than half of his students had fallen unconscious from that wine-barrel-thing. Thanks to some quick thinking they had avoided getting busted by the other teachers, but it left Negi and Naruto with a small dilemma—although it was more of a problem for the latter, really. With those outside 3-A convinced that there were no serious issues, it fell upon those in the class to carry all those girls to the hotel. Which, as their sensei, included him.

He had delayed a bit by doing other important work—finding that casket and looking over it with Negi (although he hadn't been much help) and getting transportation to the inn where they'd spend the night—but Naruto hadn't been able to evade it forever. His students were in trouble so he needed to help them.

Actually carrying some teenagers himself was out of the question—he was certainly strong enough, but his stomach wasn't. Just imagining the weight of them and the feel of their bodies against his was enough to make his mind freeze in panic and set the spiteful remarks and invectives of the Konoha villagers echoing through his head. And it wouldn't have been them touching him, either—he'd be _intentionally_ soiling them with his touch. No, that method wasn't possible.

But no one had ever said that Naruto couldn't be creative. Only ten of the people he was supposed to protect had managed to avoid the trap of cursed cranberry wine. The other seventeen had fallen into a drunken stupor. Not only did this mean that their group would have to take multiple trips down the long path to the bus stop where their ride to the hotel would wait, but a number of the girls of their remaining ten weren't strong enough to actually carry a person for that long. He had been genuinely worried that the girl each carried could get hurt.

So, of course, he had an idea, one to make that trip safer. Negi had been surprisingly amiable to it, and the two had stepped out into the surrounding woods for a quick moment to gather some leaves and sticks. Naruto had tried breaking a branch off a tree, but doing so felt… wrong, somehow. Perhaps it was the influence of one of the shrine's kami. Negi cast a spell—something about transmutation, or transmogrification, or transformation, or transfiguration. Some nonsense like that. The name didn't matter as much as what it _did_.

The sticks had fused together as though melting, resembling for a brief moment colored, heated glass more than wood as they reshaped themselves into long poles; the leaves wove together before turning into fabric, the change marked by a strange ripple coursing through the leaf-blanket. In short time they had made a handful of stretchers.

While some of the remaining ten—most notably Kaede, Asuna, Akira, and Chao Lingshen—had been able to carry a person in their own arms easily enough, the others in the group had found that the stretchers made transporting their fallen friends much easier. Naruto's concerns about flailing limbs or accidentally dropping someone on their head were allayed as pairs worked together to quickly move their sleeping classmates. He had helped, of course. If he carried someone with the poles of the stretcher, he didn't actually have to touch them.

Or, at least, so he had hoped. The sleeping bodies shifted once they got in the vehicles, brushing against his shoulder like heated brands. Once they arrived at the inn he had to carry them again—but this time he didn't have an excuse that would let him get away when they had to lift the girl he helped carry off of her stretcher and into her bed. He _had_ to filthy her with his hands, even if he pulled them back into his jacket sleeves.

Thus leading to the present situation, where he and Chizuru were slowly—too slowly—placing Natsumi onto her futon. She was asleep. That helped, although Naruto didn't know why.

But it wasn't enough to stop the shivers that ran so violently down his spine that it was a wonder it hadn't shaken apart. It wasn't enough to stop the nausea that threatened to consume him at the terrible sensation of the weight of another human being on his hands. It wasn't enough to stop the hateful accusations of villager and demon that burrowed through the area of contact like starving maggots.

He only moved the waifish girl the short distance from the stretcher to the adjacent futon, but as soon as her head was on the pillow he jerked his hands away, as though he had touched some satanic beast rather than a schoolgirl. His hands felt dirty.

Chizuru tucked the snoring Natsumi in, smiling softly at her roommate before joining her teacher who had retreated to the doorway. "And that's the last of them, I think. I can't thank you enough for… Naruto-sensei? Are you alright?"

Her voice trailed off as she looked at the boy's face for the first time since they had started carrying Natsumi, and finally saw the paleness that left his lips white and eyes that darted about with stubborn refusal to rest.

"Sensei, maybe you should lie down. With how you look, it's a surprise you didn't throw up all over Natsumi-chan's face." Chizuru spoke with a gentle gravity that prevented Naruto from looking away, a voice he imagined she had perfected from her volunteer work with children. She had been willing to chat to fill up the silence as they carried Natsumi, although he hardly trusted himself to open his mouth to reply. "We've both made a few trips, so by now everyone should be in their rooms. All you need to do now is look after yourself, so please take a rest."

It was strange. Others still worried about him—even this girl who had never spoken to him outside of the classroom. Slowly it seemed that it was becoming… not familiar, but expected. Yet the strange wrenching discomfort that pulled at his chest at each such experience failed to disappear or diminish.

The smile he gave her was pathetic, but he couldn't bring himself to give a stronger one. Besides, if his face was as bloodless as it felt, it would look strange if he tried for more. "Don't worry about it, Chizuru. I still have to check on Negi, so I can't do that yet. But you don't have to be concerned, I'll be fine."

Chizuru frowned and put her hands on her hips. Naruto was surprised to find that the seemingly gentle girl could actually become sort of… intimidating. "It doesn't work like that. People don't just stop worrying just because you tell them to."

"Really? Sorry about that, then. But it really isn't a problem, I'm not sick or anything."

"Sorry? Well, if you're sorry then you _ARE_ going to take it easy and stop pushing yourself, _right now_." She gave a smile that would scatter the guardians of the gates of hell. "Alright?"

"Y-yes ma'am!" There was a monster! Why was there a monster in his class?

"Alright. Well then, Naruto-sensei, I'll be going now, if you would please excuse me. Goodbye," she said in polite farewell as though she hadn't just bullied her teacher into obedience. Ignoring Naruto's openmouthed gaping, she left. He had no way to know that she was going to confide some of her worries in her other sensei, as a concerned person should.

He was unable to move his legs as he gawked at the absurd person walking away. When she had passed the corner and left his sight, Naruto let loose a sigh and a nervous chuckle. Well, compared to what he'd experienced so far she wasn't all that frightening, but that smile… it looked exactly like any ordinary happy grin, but that sense of foreboding that came with it gave it a completely different, nerve-wracking feeling. How did an ordinary schoolgirl dish out something like that?

Naruto spun about and headed down the hall. He wanted to go find Negi, but there was something he had to do first.

He locked the restroom door behind him and headed to the sink. Naruto took soap and the hottest water he could stand to start washing his hands and arms. The sensation of another person on them was such that he couldn't ignore how disgusting he was. He didn't _touch_ anyone he moved, not really—it was through two or more layers of clothes, so it wasn't touching, and they were asleep, so it didn't actually happen—but he felt the filth that had soaked into his skin. Konoha had been so thoughtful as to point it out to him, and the demon had only given reason to what he already knew.

Perhaps he could convince the other teachers—well, Negi was the only one in the know on what happened, so he could only talk to him—that their students should have mandatory bathing the next morning. As girls he supposed a lot of them would take baths even without an order, but he had been forced to move a few of them onto their futons. He needed to know that they had cleansed themselves of that.

His hands burned from the heat of his scrubbing, turning red and raw from the friction of his furious attempts to wash away the dirt that they had reminded him was there. There wasn't any blood in the sink, so he hadn't rubbed too hard. It hadn't really hurt much, to be honest. Of course, none of it _truly_ made his hands clean, but they could feel like it.

Naruto left to start looking around the ryokan for his friend. The inn was a large three story building in the Japanese style… which really wasn't too dissimilar from some of the buildings from his world, come to think of it. The beige-colored halls were wide and set with a number of sliding doors, each bearing a paper note listing which class and group were within. A painting of some Japanese artist brushing some Japanese landscape or a scroll of elegant calligraphy occasionally hung from the walls, which he supposed was pretty. But not nearly as pretty as the vending machines on each floor, which had wonderful things like Kit Kats, an orange drink called Morning-something, and the sight of Yue trying to get a Kansai-specific juice box she'd never tasted before from a machine that wouldn't drop her drink no matter how much she shook it.

Yue was ferocious for such a small and quiet, nerdy-ish person. He quietly resolved to leave her alone, and walked off again in search of Negi with strawberry Kit Kat and delicious orange soda in hand.

She wasn't the only student he came across, and he was briefly delayed in his search by unimportant conversations with Kaede and one Ōkōchi Akira, a tall girl that didn't make much of an impact on him apart from seeming like a nice person. Maybe he needed more time to learn about the students who he hadn't spent much time with. Then there was a… something with a glasses-wearing girl named Chisame. This something consisted her complaining about how abnormal what happened at the shrine was, mumbling angrily without hearing his reply, glaring at him (and everything), and walking off.

It was weird.

When he had given up on the lower floors and headed up to the teacher's rooms on the third, he found someone who could help him find Negi—and it spared him the trouble of going to find her afterwards. Asuna prowled up and down the hall as though she were ready to attack someone. Considering that Ayaka was currently mumbling incoherently into a pillow, this 'someone' was probably Negi.

Naruto approached cautiously. This required delicacy. "You look like you're about to assault somebody."

"Eh?" Asuna paused in her pacing and looked up at him. She calmed down, which was a relief as Naruto wasn't certain how to carry on a conversation with a girl who looked like some kind of raging predator. "Oh, hi Naruto. I just got Paru to bed, you finished too?"

That was Haruna, if he remembered right. He nodded and glanced up the corridor. "Yeah, it was Natsumi this time. Are you waiting for Negi? Is he in his room?"

"You'd think he would be, wouldn't you?" she growled. "But no. Drinking water somehow managed to get seventeen of us as hammered as a nail at a woodshop convention. And that trap, those frogs—it's definitely magic stuff."

"Well… yes," Naruto admitted, wondering if he wasn't opening himself up for some manner of terrible punishment.

Asuna's eyes lit up like she had just achieved some significant victory. "Aha! I knew it. I _knew_ it. So what's going on, huh? Weren't we trying to keep this supernatural thingamajig quiet? Dumping the whole class into the middle of it sort of ruins that."

"I think Negi would explain better than me," Naruto said, deflecting the question. This was not something that he wanted to explain, especially to Asuna.

"That's true, isn't it? You've got your other planet weirdness, but he's the one who actually uses magic."

Naruto closed his eyes so he didn't have to look at the irritating person in front of him. The twitching eyebrows gave his feelings away though. "Yeah. Right. Different type of weird. Got it."

Baka Red laughed. "Aw, you're so _sensitive_. Come on, I didn't mean anything by it, alien-sensei."

"I'm going to punch you."

This obviously surprised her, because Asuna's giggling didn't have the slightest semblance of composure. If he'd been serious he probably would have decked her right then and there.

Instead he just sighed and put his hands in his pockets. It was rather discouraging if someone laughed when he said he'd hit them. But it was also distracting, and thoughts of filth and soiled hands fell into the back reaches of his mind. "I'm looking for Negi too. I thought I checked everywhere downstairs, but I might have missed someplace if you say he's not up here. Do you want to come along?"

Asuna wiped a tear from her eye as she pulled herself to an upright position. She'd obviously enjoyed laughing at him far too much. "Aha, ha… you're hilarious. But yeah, that's a good idea. He might have just been talking in someone's room or trying to settle a drunkard to sleep or something. Let's go."

Naruto didn't have any objection to that. "I'll fill in Chachazero about our conversation afterwards. I… don't think actually having her there would help. At all."

Although most of their luggage was already at the inn before they went sight-seeing, by threat of murderous doll Naruto had kept his backpack with him. But once they came back he'd been quick to leave it and Chachazero in his room, where she now sat on his table like a malevolent watchdoll.

His student apparently knew of the doll, because she paled. It made the different colors of her eyes—one green, one blue—more striking than it already was. "Y-yeah. That's probably a good idea."

By silent agreement they headed down the stairs to escape from the third floor. There wasn't any particular reason they didn't split up while they searched through the second; it just happened that they didn't and neither one particularly cared to bring it up.

Of course, they didn't _stay_ quiet. It hadn't taken long for Asuna to start up a conversation—although it was really just each of them asking questions of the other. The most recent topic: ninjas.

"A shinobi, huh? So can you walk through walls, turn invisible, and walk on water like in the movies?"

Ah, film! Movies were so much more _awesome_ here than back home. Except for the Princess Gale movies, of course. A true fan's loyalty never faltered. "I didn't know you had ninja movies over here. You'll have to show me one of them." Naruto decided, determined to learn of this world's ninjas and ignorant of just how badly film had represented them.

"I think that there are probably some shinobi who can do all that, but I haven't learned how," Naruto continued with some embarrassment. "Although I guess I can sort of go through walls."

Asuna looked at him with doubt clear on her face. "How do you "sort of" go through a wall?"

"Well… you break it and go through the hole."

"Oh. That makes sens—wait! What are you, stupid? That's not a ninja technique! Anyone can do that!"

He just cringed away from the fearsome wrath of Asuna and quietly continued the search. Even he knew it wasn't a special move, he was just pointing that it was possible…

Well, it was quiet until they moved on to the topic of Asuna and Negi's fight with Evangeline, and even though Asuna couldn't describe movement and fighting very well she still captured the feeling enough for Naruto to want to get out there and train more. Flight and a tornado-beam of wind and lightning would be hard to compete against.

Then there was Evangeline. That was… well, he didn't think he could consider her to be in the same category as anything he could compare himself to.

But such conversation swiftly ended as they found Negi by a vending machine on the first floor, Chamo by his side and the entire room conveniently empty of anyone who might eavesdrop on their discussion.

"I'm telling you, Aniki, that Setsuna chick's behind this! Who else could have done it?"

"Hrmm… well… I suppose she _is_ sort of suspicious and there have been these weird events, but I don't—"

The conversation between boy and ermine was broken by Asuna's, "Negi, hey! We've been looking for you everywhere!" before they could continue, as she hurried over to them with Naruto trailing in her wake.

The smile and greeting Negi gave them in return had a decidedly worried cast to them. If Naruto were to guess, he'd say that Negi wasn't looking forwards to explaining everything to Asuna. "Oh, A-Asuna-san, Naruto-kun. Sorry, I didn't know that you were, um, looking for me."

Yep. Definitely nervous… although he couldn't imagine why Negi would send him a significant look-over after his greeting. Again, Naruto had no way to know about the short yet worrisome conversation Chizuru had held with the other boy not minutes before he and Asuna had shown up.

Naruto returned a grin of his own as he took a seat on the bench near him. The front room of the ryokan was wide and open, with one corner devoted entirely to selling souvenirs and food—particularly Kyoto and Kansai trademarks (if those foods could be sealed into a container). One wall was mostly glass, showing a single enclosed hot spring outside—it was obviously purely there for visitors to see rather than use, as large decorated rocks emerged from much of its surface and its surroundings were decorated with an array of flowers. And, of course, it was clearly visible to anyone walking into the building.

The shop had closed already though, and the lady who worked at the desk was busy speaking with Nitta and Seruhiku upstairs over… whatever arrangements needed to be made. Naruto didn't really know. So despite being the lobby of a popular inn, this open space was currently a perfect place for them to talk about secret matters, as long as they kept an eye on the stairs.

"Me and Yue managed to convince the teachers that they were only exhausted from the long day and needed to rest," Asuna began, which was actually true, in part. The emergency on the train, then the visit to the Kyoto National Museum, and exploring Kiyomizu-dera… even without telling them about what went wrong, they would obviously be tired.

But Asuna wasn't finished. "So tell me what the hell's going on! I had to carry Misa and Haruna to their rooms, and they were obviously dead drunk. Then there was the frogpocalypse, and that pit at the temple—what's happening, Negi?"

Negi sighed. "I thought that this was something that I could take care of without getting the class involved, but that didn't quite work out. Ever since the frog incident I've been certain I'd need to tell you the reason behind what's happened, and I've put some thought into it in between reining in the class."

So I'd like to just explain that to you, but Naruto's here too." The young genius continued before Naruto could interrupt him with his protests. "And each of you knows something the other doesn't. To bring the both of you up to speed, I think I'll have to start at the beginning."

Naruto's complaint died before it even began. Chamo sidled over with a strange look on his furry face. "You're interested, right? In a situation like this there's no way you couldn't be, what with the attacking sorcerers and all."

"Sorcerers? I figured this wreck was another mess made by magic."

"Hey, hey! Cool down, Ane-san. Let Aniki tell his story."

Negi leaned forwards in his seat, his fingers laced together in front of him. His staff stood propped against the vending machine, still wrapped in those white strips of cloth, his backpack fallen over on the floor alongside it.

"My father was a Magister Magi—a mage who actively works to make the world a better place without letting ordinary people know that he's using magic. In natural disasters, wars, tyrannies—they act against all of these and more."

"He was titled "The Thousand Master," and he travelled across the world to save whoever he could, wherever he could. For this, he was called a hero." Negi swallowed, and Naruto could see that this was only the barest piece of what Negi wanted to say. There was a deep font of unspoken praise and unuttered description that he was holding back to keep this brief.

Naruto wondered how much of that unsaid were true portrayals of the Thousand Master, and how much were the longing imaginings of an orphaned child. It was a matter he had some experience in.

Negi licked his lips before continuing. "Ten years ago, he died. That's what the community of magic knows, even down to such details as the how and the hour of his death."

He had already known that Negi hadn't grown up with parents—it wasn't something that was explained to him, it was simply a fact that came through as he spent time with the other teacher and the girls he roomed with. That didn't make hearing it any less unpleasant.

"But they're wrong," Negi declared, a sense of triumph in his voice as though it were a personal victory. "I know the Thousand Master is alive—this staff is proof of that. I met him six years ago, on…" his voice trailed away for the barest moment before continuing on another topic, even as his hand slipped away from brushing along the staff. "He's definitely alive, and that's the reason I arranged for this field trip."

A glance towards Asuna told Naruto that she already knew this, although she kept her attention on Negi with no sign of being bored—this wasn't a topic that allowed that. There was a brief period of silence as Negi finished that segment of his explanation, which Naruto used to speak up.

"So this entire trip is an excuse to go looking for your dad?"

"In a sense." His face fell and his eyes swept down and to the side for only a moment, but it was easy to see that he would much prefer that Naruto's question didn't need a qualifier. "He used to own a house somewhere in Kyoto, and if I can find it I think I may be able to get a hold on some manner of clue that might lead me to my father's current whereabouts. Or at the very least, tell me where I should search next. And Kyoto really is a wonderful place for a field trip."

Or it would have been, without the danger of the ominous and almost terrorist sorceries hanging over their heads.

Naruto didn't mention that six years was a long time, and that anything could have happened. Negi thought things through more than he did and had to know that there was a chance the Thousand Master had already died. He just wasn't giving the thought credence enough to let it stop him—which Naruto could respect, as he would have likely done the same had their lives been reversed.

There was something in what Negi had earlier said; an unusual pause and avoidance Naruto didn't normally associate with his friend. It prompted his curiosity, and motivated his next question. "That meeting you mentioned—what happened six years ago? Did that staff used to belong to him?"

That was a mistake. Naruto knew he shouldn't have said it moments after he uttered the words. Negi's cheeks paled and his hands grasped the bench as though to shatter it. "Y-yes. The staff was his. But… Naruto. Do you remember what we talked about on the train?"

It wasn't something that he could forget. As a friend, there were some things one shouldn't pry into, even with good intentions. Negi's offer had saved Naruto from his attempts to 'help', and affirmed that they were, indeed, friends. Along with the obvious confused joy of having yet another friend was concern, for he was discovering that friendship came with certain responsibilities.

Asuna shot him a hard look, obviously seeing Negi's pained state and blaming him. It was only fair, as she was right—not hurting a friend was one of those duties. "Of course I remember. You said you also had to explain part of it to Asuna?" he clumsily redirected. Gratitude flashed across Negi's eyes.

Softly, with his faced turned aside, "Sorry." This was another one of those responsibilities.

"Hm? What for?" Negi waved away his apology, his demeanor returning to what it was before Naruto screwed up, seeming to Naruto like he was pretending the exchange hadn't happened. The once scowling girl now looked confused. "Well, you do have a point. So, getting back on topic; Asuna, the Headmaster didn't actually approve of this trip at first due to the possible dangers."

"Eh? So somehow this got the green light even with all that. Great going—is that why our class keeps getting attacked by mages?" The look of approval from Naruto's apology quickly transformed into a fearful glare that pierced into Negi, as though trying to peer into his skull to find out where in his brain was the part that went so terribly wrong.

Negi rushed to defend himself. "No, that wasn't it at all. You see, the magical parts of eastern and western Japan—the Kanto and Kansai Magic Associations—have had bad relations for a long time. Konoe Konoemon is actually the Elder of the Kanto Magic Association, and news that a mage from his school would come into Kansai territory made no few of them furious."

"Not getting the part where the field trip wasn't a stupid idea."

"That old Headmaster wanted to put an end to the bickering, the intimidations, and the conflicts that broke out from time to time," Naruto butted in to pull some of the heat off of Negi before his poor friend sweated himself unconscious. "So he let the classes go, but he gave Negi a letter to give to the Elder of the West, which is supposed to put an end to that. So this is also a diplomatic mission. But… well, you are right that we knew we might get attacked."

Negi spoke before Asuna exploded. "The Kansai Magic Association wouldn't take violent action against a single visitor, especially one on, as Naruto said, a diplomatic mission. But there's a smaller faction within the organization that is more fervent in their opposition to the East, and I came expecting that they might try to prevent me from getting this letter to the Elder."

Obvious worry welled in her eyes even as she continued to glower at her roommate. Being the only one standing provided her an edge in intimidation. "Stupid Negi! Baka! How could ever you think this was a good idea? You… you just hurled yourself into a situation where you knew you'd get attacked by some lunatic! You tried to take on Eva alone, too—do you have no sense of self-preservation or something?"

"Ah… um… yes, but—well, but I _did_ take her on, even when she was so powerful. I thought I'd be able to make it through this, at least. And Naruto-kun is a ninja…"

Asuna's mouth couldn't decide whether it wanted to be open or closed, and shaped around words that didn't come out as she tried to find something to say, her frustration stealing sound from her. This continued for one silent minute of neither boy being brave enough to interrupt the redhead, until with a furious sigh she slumped her shoulders.

"I give up. You're an idiot. What else were you going to say?" she mumbled as she sat down between them. There wasn't enough room for her, but she didn't care as she forced each of the boys to the side. Naruto fled to the far end of the bench, the tainted hip that had touched her turned away. Yes, mandatory bathing before free activities started tomorrow. That was a good idea.

"Right. Well, we were expecting a group to attacking us that wanted the conflict to continue, but neither the Headmaster nor myself imagined that they would resort to targeting ordinary people like this," Negi explained, unable to look Asuna in the eyes. "That… isn't something mages _do_. It's something you learn by rote before you ever learn to cast a spell, and the penalties for it are far harsher than just letting someone know about magic. Getting turned into an ermine is a blessing in comparison."

Chamo nodded. "Yeah. There's magic-using criminals and terrorists, but even then you almost never see them targeting ordinary people. There was actually a war fought not long ago, and even on Mundus Vetas—sorry, Asuna, that's Earth—a lot of mages were pulled into it. It was a full-fledged war of magic, which the entire world didn't notice."

"Right. And I know that doesn't excuse what has happened, but I wanted you to know that I wouldn't have made this a field trip if I thought any of you would be in danger. I can't say enough how sorry I am."

"He's also trying not to ask for forgiveness," Naruto added, pointing out Negi's downcast gaze and hunched shoulders as he thought Asuna would be upset with him. Negi was the guilty-conscience type of person, wasn't he?

That said, his own eyes couldn't exactly stay on her either. "I'll be adding my own apology onto his, then. I was present as well, and was in a better position to notice whatever went wrong than Negi. But I couldn't do anything to stop it, and didn't even notice until it was already too late. So…" He sighed deeply. "I'm sorry."

His entire body was enhanced by his… '_guest_', and he relied upon his senses often; but they certainly hadn't been enough this time. Had he even thought to check above the falls? Naruto could count himself lucky that the worst that had happened was that his students got as drunk as a thirsty god, because it could have been a lot worse.

"A war? Seriously?" Asuna asked, but continued to the more relevant present before Chamo could explain more. "Well, I don't know about that sort of thing. What I do know is that you're being stupid again, Negi."

She leaned over and affectionately bonked him on the head. "Look, it's pretty obvious it's not your fault, right? There's no way I'd keep blaming you now that you've explained it like that—I think you're the only person here who would, so knock it off. And Naruto… " She sighed and shook her head. "Not thinking of every could-be and not seeing everything in every direction is a stupid thing to apologize for."

Asuna hopped off the bench and stretched her arms and shoulders, twisting her upper body as she spoke. "So what you're basically saying is that we've got crazy people attacking the class and you need help, right?" Negi was, of course, not given a chance to answer. "Alright then! Kagurazaka Asuna officially lends you her power!" she declared as she pumped her arm.

This arm quickly wrapped around Negi's neck. "Not that I'd need to say that if you hadn't come to me, first! I'm pretty certain that Pactio business mentioned something about 'partners', right?"

"Er, right. It did. Sorry," rasped Negi as his head was trapped against Asuna's side at an uncomfortable-looking angle.

The odd word caught Naruto's attention. "You mentioned a 'Pakteo'. What is that?"

"The quick version," Chamo explained, "is that it's a very special, close, and powerful magical connection and contract. It has certain conditions to be made, and once formed it allows the Magister Magi—the mage one who formed the contract—to send magical energy to empower his Minister Magi—the one who accepted the contract, as well as providing a plethora of other comparatively insignificant benefits that aren't as important (it's much more complicated than that, Naruto, but moving on to keep the discussion alive…)."

"The Magister and Minister both get a card, which denotes the true nature of the subject of the Pactio, and which bears the likeness of the Minister (or Ministra, in this case) and the artifact granted to them by—"

Wait, his head hurt. That was a lot of info, Chamo had to slow down some. But it did sound like what Chachamaru had talked about on the phone, although not quite the same. The Pactio seemed like a very useful tool, particularly considering the challenges they'd likely soon face… Negi was the only mage Naruto knew, so perhaps they should form one.

"Wait. Waitwaitwait," interrupted the wide-eyed Asuna, a goofy grin spread across her face. "_I_ get a cool magical thing? Wasn't there a sword on my card?"

"Well, yes, but it needs to be summoned each time you use it."

"That… that is so _awesome_!" Asuna squealed, a sound Naruto didn't particularly associate with her. Her face lit up like a child being told she was the new owner of a candy shop. "I looked absolutely amazing in that picture, I can't wait to actually use it! This totally makes up for using up half of my first kiss on it. I'm going to kick so much ass."

Holy shit, that really did sound awesome, and he hadn't even seen a Pactio card yet! He couldn't wait to… hold on. 'Kiss'?

"So, you two had to… uh… kiss, for the contract?"

Chamo hmm'd, and if Naruto was looking at him instead of Asuna he would have seen that the ermine looked very much like he was trying to be honest only by technicality. "It's definitely the most rewarding way to make a Probationary Pactio Contract, yeah."

Yeah, he'd toss out that contract idea. Naruto suddenly found that he didn't need one that badly.

He coughed into his fist and vaguely pointed his finger towards the contracted pair. "So, are you two…?"

Negi cocked his head to the side in visible confusion, but Asuna instantly understood his meaning, as expected of a teenage girl from a class of teenage girls (even if that girl was one as thick as Asuna). So she understandably reacted with the calm composure suitable for a lady her age.

"_**No**_, no! No! _No_. No. **NO**!" Asuna denied with a blush the color of an angry flame, flailing her arms as though to physically ward away Naruto's question (and knocking Negi off his seat in the process). "No. No, that's not it at all! It was the final resort of a desperate situation, and besides which he's just a kid! That means it was half of one, at most, so I still have my first kiss."

Her eyes widened in joy and sparkled with affection as she clasped her hands together. "Saved for Takahata-sensei…"

"Right, right, yadda yadda, moving on," Chamo loudly interjected, hopping up onto the again-seated Negi's hair to get their attention. "Did you forget? We're in serious trouble here! Now that the background is all spelled out, we need to get thinking about how to counter that Kansai Magic Association."

"Actually, it's just the extremist faction of it—"

"Pfffft," the ermine raspberried in response to his master. "Actually schmactually. Too many words and it'll be too long to say without dragging down the conversation. What do we know about the KMA so far?"

"Kanto and Kansai both start with 'K'…" Naruto trailed off and grinned at the irritated look Chamo gave him. "Right, serious. There've been three attacks so far, one of which was in two parts. The first move was taken by the Kansai Magic Association with that frog attack, which they used as cover to sneak in a shikigami and steal Negi's letter when we tried to find out what the purpose of the frogs were."

"And that's when we found out that Setsuna is a _spy_ for the Kansai Magic Association!" Chamo shouted out with conspiratorial fervor.

Asuna gaped openmouthed before…

"SHE'S WHAT?"

Negi stepped in to try to smooth things over before his familiar could paint Setsuna in bad colors. "At the end of the train had we nearly lost the shikigami. We found Setsuna-san holding the letter, and the familiar returned to a paper state. She returned the letter as though she had simply found it, but… she was strangely hostile to Naruto-kun. I think Chamo is off in his assumptions, but I have to agree that her behavior is suspicious.

The ermine huffed and turned his head away.

"Ugh… that just came completely out of nowhere," complained Asuna, although Naruto thought it was justified. He wasn't certain about his stance on Setsuna, but she had been classmates with the girl for two years. "A Kansai spy? In our class? That's as absurd a coincidence as there being a bounty for Evangeline. But there were more attacks apart from those. If Setsuna wasn't involved in them, wouldn't that mean she was innocent?"

Asuna's eyes still showed her surprise and the lingering confusion from Chamo's accusation, but her tone was colored more with worry than upset or betrayal.

"It could _maybe_ mean she's innocent! Or it could mean that, as an assassin, she's sly enough to _set up her traps without us spotting her_! Like a trap-making, sword-wielding _feline_!"

Naruto nodded, ignoring that outburst. "Yeah, there was also that sudden pit with the frogs at the shrine. But that… didn't really do much, as far as I can tell. Perhaps it was a warning, or a threat that they could do anything in their own territory? It didn't actually do much."

"Then there was the drugged water at the fountain—enough cranberry wine poured into it for everyone to get drunk." The blond frowned. That one had been absolutely successful, too much so. These traps were well-planned. "If they're going to stage an attack, they'd do it tonight. More than half of the class is unconscious, including at least one who would be able to fight against sorcerers. Setting Setsuna side, I know of only the three of us and one other person who are awake enough that we would be able to fight against an attacking magician."

"Would that 'one other' be Nagase-san?" Negi asked.

"Well, yes. How did you know?" Naruto regretted the question after asking. Negi had been a teacher for much longer than Naruto's short while, so of course he had more time to learn about his students.

"Before the final fight with Evangeline-san I did… ahem... character-affirming training with her," Negi said, a small smile on his face from the memories. "I didn't learn ay of the amazing feats she could do, and because it lasted a single day I didn't get stronger in the least from trying to keep up with her. But I found myself again, and without that I wouldn't have been able to stand against Evangeline-san at all."

The child prodigy laughed. "I suppose you could only expect something remarkable from a ninja, right? Although more plausibly, it had more to do with how Nagase-san is so wise and mature for someone so young."

"What!? When'd my classmate become a ninja?"

Although Negi had continued speaking, Naruto hadn't paid attention since a certain word was spoken. 'Ninja'. Kaede was a kunoichi. It was less surprising than it otherwise would have been—he should have noticed when he picked up her kunai on the train. The briefest strain of worry strummed for but a moment before disappearing—she obviously wasn't from any village from his world, and didn't even use chakra. It was impossible for her to be after him.

Which meant he had befriended an actual, trained shinobi. He had to hold back the urge to break into genuine, joyous laughter. A _real ninja_, who could train him and fill those empty gaps that a runaway from a ninja village had no opportunity to correct. She could even teach him juts—no, no, he'd just forgot that she used chi, not chakra. Five seconds after thinking it. Damn, that was stupid. That wouldn't work… but there would have to be something he could do to repay her, if she would train him. If. That was a big if…

"AHEM! Hem. Ah, um. Yes," Naruto began with the clearest of diction and enunciation, "That's what we've faced so far, and all we know for sure about our attackers is that they're good at forming clever plans. We're fortunate no one's been hurt so far."

Negi wriggled uncomfortably, as though there were something unpleasant in his body. "That… isn't entirely true. Remember when I examined that keg of alcohol?"

"You said it had a spell that hid it until its targets drunk from it."

"Right. I... may have not told the proper and entire truth. We needed to get our students somewhere safe, and I didn't think you would react calmly if you heard it then. I did intend to tell you later," Negi rushed to assure him, still not explaining what had actually happened and only making Naruto feel more worried.

Then his friend from Wales actually began to describe what he thought had happened from his examinations of the magic on the keg and tracing the residue to the girls, and into them. Negi quietly told him about the arcane seal that had burned its way into their thoughts, and how that same magic likely enslaved their minds. A cold pit formed in Naruto's stomach by the time he heard that the invisible casket of wine had only revealed itself by an influx of magic, and the only nearby source could be from the students infected.

It was a cold that froze his insides to the point that they began to burn. Naruto only remembered two that had ever evoked the same feeling. One was the man who chased him from his home. The other lied in a prison chained by Death.

Hate. Yes, that's what it was. That feeling was hate.

"You said…" Naruto's voice cut off because he could feel the words hoarsening into a growl. The ones he wanted to bleed weren't here, just his friend and his student. He needed control. "You said it was gone from them. It isn't in them anymore, right?"

Negi nodded, his gaze not rising above the waist and his face not quite facing either of them directly. His voice was quiet. "Yes. The spell was consumed completely, and I pulled out the traces that was either left, or that came into the gap it left behind. I haven't learned Oriental spellcraft, so I can only guess from closely examining the magic.

"That whole scenario's pretty specific for 'guessing'," muttered Asuna, to which Naruto nodded. But if the pieces were there, he was certain that Negi would be able to put them together more accurately than either of them could. "Are they alright now? It's gone, but… I mean, they were… mind controlled like that." Her face twisted at the thought of one's mind being violated.

"Apart from the equivalent of light sunburn around their eyes—which I healed, by the way—they're physically fine, and their minds will still work like they ought to. But I don't know what they'll remember… it depends on how the spell was worked. If they remember its effects, there would be… pain. That isn't something someone easily snaps back from, and they will have nightmares, panic attacks, and similar results from such trauma, at best. At worst… I'd rather not describe it."

He didn't need to. Not to Naruto, at least. The wooden bench creaked in protest under his grip.

Negi's eyes came up as he spoke of the aftereffects of the spell, but still wouldn't meet anyone's gaze. "If the spell made them forget what happened then they'll be in good shape, although they might have occasional bad dreams. I'm hoping for this outcome—it is only a small step to take for preserving the secret of magic, so they might have added it to the spell. That should give us some hope that they'll forget what happened to them."

A sour taste overcame Naruto's tongue, and he felt as though weighed down by an ugly boulder. This black cloud hung over their students, and all he could do was wait until morning came and hope that Makie and Ayaka had been shown mercy. Mercy from an assault that none of them—especially _he_—had noticed until its completion. The healing wound in his mind from his visitation in the train throbbed from his renewed burst of self-loathing.

"I don't want to kill the good news," Asuna said, "But these guys have been using magic on us this whole time. I don't think they'd take that extra step for just two girls."

Negi shook his head. "Every attack is explainable as something other than spells. No one in the class has even mentioned magic as the cause with any seriousness. But Makie and Ayaka would have a stronger impact on the possibility of revealing our existence. But that doesn't mean your question isn't still valid, so I took an extra step to look at them myself."

He blushed and looked away. "I was worried so I cast a small divination. Full-fledged, comprehensible, long-reaching, perfectly accurate predictions of the future are almost impossible, and the branch as a whole is notoriously finicky so I've never devoted myself to the deeper secrets. Anya was always more dedicated to it than me. All I managed to get was vague answers when I stepped into their room to cast the spell while everyone else was going out to carry up more students. Considering what happened to them, I thought oinomancy would give the best answer. They are likely going to be fine."

"Likely?" Chamo asked with raised brow.

"As I said, divinations can be vague," Negi said, but with good news now delivered his voice had a life that had been absent moments earlier. "The more straightforward or the more directly important a question is, the lower its accuracy or comprehensibility. A proper oracle might tell it otherwise or give an actual prophecy … but that certainly isn't something that I have control over. You can't _choose_ to have that gift and curse."

The ermine lit a cigarette from wherever he stored the smokesticks. "Well… the only proper foretelling I've seen worked was driromancy, and that didn't sound this hazy. Then again, a margrave in the sidhe courts doesn't exactly work by the same rules the rest of the world does." What the hell was that supposed to mean?

"B-but when we met! You told me I was going to be heartbroken!" Asuna shouted, stabbing her finger towards her contractor. The hope infused into the conversation had given her back her volume.

"It-it was just really clear, you had a really strong heartbreak aspect. But I didn't know what would actually happen! I was just trying to help and warn you…"

"You pissed me off, that's what you did you little—"

"AHEM!" Chamo bellowed, not even pretending to sound like he was coughing as he verbally wrested the two apart. "I heard about that. I bet it was auramancy, right? That's an awfully inexact sort of thing, even I know that. But anyways, it does fit—if it was so easy to tell the future, no one with magic would have any problems in their life."

Naruto tilted his head, inclining it forwards only slightly. "That doesn't really help us, but I suppose it makes sense." He supposed. Guessed, maybe. It sounded reasonable, but also sort of confusing. "Well, that's not quite right. They're going to be safe, right? It's a relief on its own, but I think worrying about them might be a problem if we get attacked tonight."

The brief period of light spirits the good news brought was taken down by Naruto's words. He briefly regretted saying them, but it was likely that he'd ruin it with something else anyways. Asuna let go of Negi's hair as the teacher sat forwards, interlacing his fingers as he thought.

"It feels a little cold to admit, but… it's true, now that you've brought it up. I'm not any sort of warrior, but even I know that bringing extra distractions into a fight is a bad idea." Negi said. His eyes focused and his brow lowered as a visible determination set into him. "So. Since we're expecting something to happen, we should probably prepare as best we can for their coming."

Asuna's head slowly to the right, moving more the narrower her eyes went as she thought. Naruto could see the moment the idea struck her when her eyes popped open. She leaned forwards and lifted up a single finger as she spoke in an eager voice. "You mean like setting up some traps of our own, right? Or using those antique magic thingies you pulled out on Eva?"

"You've got the jist of it, Ane-san," Chamo said approvingly around the cigarette in his mouth. "I don't know what Aniki's thinking of, but I think putting some spells around the ryokan could only be a good thing, if we're discrete. But the magic item part's a no-go."

Negi looked abashed. "I… didn't think to pack them. And I still haven't got all of them back from Evangeline-san yet. And they're _antiques_. Sure, a few of them can still be used easily—the magic gun if I could spare the ammunition and a couple of the focused staves, for instance—but you can't expect something like a ceramic seal ring to be just whipped out and used whenever! That Egyptian faience is old and fragile."

Brief disappointment washed over Naruto. He'd seen some of Negi's collection when he went to his room, as did most who entered. What hung on the wall of Negi's part of the room looked normal enough that that he didn't have to worry about his students discovering his secret. The rest of his collection he kept boxed up for the same reason. While Naruto had only seen some of those old artifacts, he would have liked to see more of the sometimes strange-looking things—and he would have especially liked to have seen what magic could come from that assortment of odds and ends.

Chamo grimaced. "That's true, but it won't be of much comfort when Sakurazaki comes to cut off our tails."

"I still don't think that's likely to happen, Chamo. Even if she was a spy, a junior high student doesn't really have many good opportunities to steal even remotely useful information. I don't think that they'd send her over here for that."

"Hmph," Chamo crossed his arms—er, forelegs—and sat back at his master's words. "Like I'd believe a story with such skimpy evidence and meager speculation."

His eyebrow twitched. Naruto wondered if anyone else considered slapping the rodent after those words.

Asuna slapped the rodent after those words. "Then you should stop telling them yourself, you phony ferret!" Chamo spun around a couple of times before landing in a dizzy heap on Negi's lap.

"Look, I know Konoka," she said, "and I don't think there's any way a childhood friend of hers could be up to something so terrible." Her left hand came up so her forefinger and thumb could worry at her lip.

Chamo leapt to his paws the moment she had finished speaking. "Childhood friend?! That Headmaster Konoe told us Konoka-nēsan had been born in Kyoto. If that's the case, then…!"

He hopped down from the bench with a surprisingly loud exhale before shoving half his body into Negi's bag. "Where'd you put it, Aniki?"

"Er… what?"

"You know what I mean! The registry roster classy thing where you'd check off each successful route if this were a visual novel?"

No one said anything as they stared at him, speechless in the face of… whatever just happened. Negi was the first one to snap out of it. "Why would yo—oh. Oh, right! I-I think I remember something like that, too."

He stretched out to unzip a different pouch of the backpack and slip out a thin booklet. His thin fingers flipped it open to immediately land on the desired page, where he pressed his finger below Setsuna's picture.

"J-j-just look at it! I-it even says Kyoto in the roster," Negi stammered in fear and disbelief as he stared at the offending word.

"_AHA!_" Chamo barked out again as he swiped it out of Negi's hands. "Let me see. Eeyup, it's right there—proof that she's from Kyoto! But what's this Kaminaru-ryū thing?"

He shook his head as soon as Asuna started to deny knowing anything. "Doesn't matter. What does matter is that that _we're now certain that_ _she's an__** assassin**__ from the Kansai Magic Association!_"

Asuna backed away from the roaring stoat. "Uh, is that so? I don't think that's quite what it said, but it does look sort of incriminating…"

That it did, although Naruto was certain that they couldn't use 'certain' to describe it. But they still had to act on what they had learned. He thought. They couldn't ambush a fellow student if they didn't know if she was an enemy. But neither could they sit on their hands and do nothing. And if she was a bad apple, then fighting against attackers from both the inside and outside would very likely overwhelm them, even if Kaede lent a hand.

"We should tell Kaede about everything that's happened. I think she'd help us once we've explained the reason behind the attacks, and she might be able to help us if Setsuna's a problem. We don't know how many enemies we'll fac e, and although I don't actually know how strong she is I get the feeling that she could beat any of us in a fight."

"That sounds right to me. I didn't know she was a ninja—by the way, holy shit—but we've always known that she was really fit, and most of the class thought she was a black belt in something. No one's ever actually seen her so much as shove another person, but… it just seemed like it fit her," Asuna replied.

"Then you can be the one to go ask her for help," said Negi. His clothes rustled as he stood to grasp his bag and cloth-wrapped staff. "I'll go outside to start preparing some magic circles. Flytrap spells are high-level capturing magic and are all but impossible to escape, and I could plant them at what look like possible entrances for an intruder. Then a barrier—"

Naruto urgently cut Negi short before his friend could start to act on his words. "You have the letter, remember! If you go outside you're painting a target on yourself."

That made the young wizard pause. "That's true. And I obviously can't leave it unguarded until we have that barrier up. Chamo could draw them without catching anyone's attention, but I don't think you can power that many, can you?"

"Nah, can't help you there," Chamo replied. He took a long drag from his cigarette. "I'm afraid that's more than one ermine elf can handle. And I can't shape a flytrap circle—I've learned a lot more since you taught me how to make magic circles (although in hindsight I wish I hadn't volunteered to be your test dummy for them 'harmless' lessons), but I never got that one. But if you brought Ane-san out with you to protect you, I could help set the raw circles in for you, if you gave me the count of points on its star and a basic perimeter type. You'd be able to power them after you complete them, I'd actually do one of the proper duties of a familiar, and our Ministra here can bodyguard us with that sexy body of hers. We'd be like a proper Magister Magi's team!"

The ermine was promptly smashed through the floor by a vengeful hand, his heart pierced by a glare that had been sharpened to a razor's edge.

Naruto nodded appreciatively, not paying attention as Chamo bled his last into the hole that had been burnt down into the center of the earth. "That's the best plan for now. Telling Kaede about what's happened will be my role, then. I imagine setting up that magic defense thing will take time, so you can just find me once I'm done."

He grinned. "I promise I won't be hard to find."

"You better not be," Asuna grumbled with crossed arms, "because I'm not going to hunt through the entire inn again just to find you at the first place I looked."

As though those words and the answering laughter were a sign to part, the three went out the door. Asuna and Negi spoke and laughed easily, the taller giving the smaller a light punch in the arm for something Naruto didn't try to hear. Chamo, somehow still alive, made a smart remark from atop Negi's shoulder, only to shut up partway as Asuna began cracking the knuckles of her fist.

It was with odd reluctance that he turned away from them to pursue his own task. Each group of students shared a single room in the ryokan. Naruto knew that Group 2 was on the second floor by the stairs and headed there.

His rap on the door was quickly answered by a bedraggled-looking student. Large round glasses sat loosely enough upon her nose that Naruto could tell they slid down frequently, and her hair was pulled back almost completely into two straight braids from the nape of her neck downwards (and slightly outwards). One of the students he hardly knew apart from her nickname, "Professor Hakase".

Hakase pushed her glasses up. "Sensei. You already helped us carry Satsuki up here, so all of Group 2 is accounted for."

Hakase had insisted that she help carry Satsuki up to their room, even though the larger student was obviously too much for her to lift even with Chao helping. Naruto had lent a hand as his second trip up, and in the process learned Hakase's family name was "Satomi". He was a little surprised, though; from what he felt of how the weight was lifted, it seemed that Chao could have picked up Satsuki all by herself. But carrying one end while a friend tries to lift the other is a different story.

She began to close the door as though learning that was his entire reason for coming here. Naruto pressed his hand against the edge of the door to keep her from leaving before he could speak. "I knew you were fine already, this isn't about that. Is Kaede here?"

"Ah. You came here for another reason. It was to talk. My mistake, and my apologies. I simply gave you the information I thought you wanted to allow you to go on your way to achieve whatever it is you wished to achieve." It was odd to watch her shake her head, as he had no idea why she was doing it. "I understand." Naruto didn't. "She is not here. Goodbye."

And then she closed the door. That was all. She just closed the door in his face.

Naruto stood there for almost a full minute just standing before their door in shock, and perhaps some small bit of awe that someone like that actually existed. Although she was certainly more abrupt than she had been earlier, when she had been flinging about fancy words about the possible health repercussions of becoming so drunk.

When he finally left to go looking for his ninja friend, he found nothing. While this was to be expected of a kunoichi that was actually hiding, Naruto was rather certain Kaede wasn't, even though he looked through all three floors without hearing or seeing her—and he couldn't smell so well as to track by scent like an Inuzuka.

Without results, he could only trudge back to his room and wait for the other, actually successful group. He wouldn't be waiting alone, though. Oh no.

"It's about time you came back! Did you kill those two girls for drugging everyone else? Did you catch who started it? I bet they were watching. I would. I wouldn't have put wine in that barrel, though. Maybe acid. Or spiders! Or _acid spiders_!"

This was what Naruto faced as he opened the door to his room. She sat there on his table, grinning as she discussed murdering the students in his care. Actually, he wondered if she could make an expression _other_ than a creepy grin—her face was made of wood, after all. But she was also magical…

"I was bored all alone. Play with me," Chachazero bemoaned and demanded, her tiny black top hat nearly falling off as she shook her head. "Do you like tea parties? Maybe dress-up? Or using thumbtacks to tear out someone's heart? Nope, that takes too long…," she said, losing volume as she pondered what else might be… _'fun'_.

"No!" he hurried cried out before she could come up with something more horrific. She had been sent up with his luggage, but perhaps he should have slipped her into Negi's instead. Or anyone's but his own. "Sorry, I can't. Er… lot's to think about."

Chachazero closed her eyes and nodded with an even mouth. So she could move that constructed face. "Something happened, then? I suppose that you didn't like to hear when you talked to the little Magister and Ministra? Or whatever, a thing along those lines. Feel free to ponder, consider, reflect, and possibly take out your feelings on surrounding objects."

A surprisingly perceptive statement came from the crazy puppet, and Naruto stared at her in silence for longer than he probably should have.

Then he took her advice and began to think, striding back and forth across the room as his jumbled mind sorted through the day. Or parts of it.

Makie and the Class Representative could be truly hurt from being dragged into this feud that involved them not at all. Underestimating the effects of severe trauma had gotten a lot of ninja of every rank killed, and not in battle. His two students certainly weren't that, and it sounded like it was even most likely that they would be fine once they woke up.

But 'likely' wasn't 'surely'. He should have noticed that something was wrong. Maybe Naruto didn't know Ayaka or Makie well, but as he looked back even he could see where their behavior had taken a turn; he doubted ordinary people would care much about it, but as one aware of the supernatural, and as some who had _just endured an enemy attack_, it was too clear to him. He could have stopped it. He **should** have stopped it.

Why had he thought the hole in the temple floor was unimportant? Who would waste time on a meaningless trap? Where else would they get that spell cast on them? Oh, he looked out at the landings above and below them and the trees surrounding the temple for an enemy, but that didn't excuse him ignoring the one right beside him.

His failure. Their punishment.

Konoka was another student he had failed, but a touch closer than the last. He had met her a few times when he conferred with Negi, so there was some passing familiarity. And yet, he still hurt her by simple reason of being himself. There was no risk of life-changing trauma, but it was a pain nonetheless.

He hadn't even apologized.

The thought prompted Naruto to look at his hands. Had it been the lady at the orphanage, he wondered, who had first leapt away from his fingers and wiped away at herself to remove whatever filth he had left there? He couldn't remember, but trying to recall made the skin of his fingertips feel as though it was going to retch.

A wave of goosebumps peppered his flesh, presaging his shudder at the memory of trying to carry his students to their rooms. The memory brought back no small amount of nausea, and he clamped his hands together as he paced, squeezing them tightly and painfully together as he tried to control his breathing.

At only her touch he leaped away, and just that movement led to a misunderstanding. The slight hurt on her face, born of ignorance, was minor, so easy to laugh away… but it meant more than that. Who he was hurt people, or could in the future.

Something in Naruto's mind shied away from continuing that line of thought.

He pushed the topic instead to something closely related. The thing in his room. Hurting people, Chachazero, Chachazero, hurting people … it's a natural connection to make.

"Say, Chachazero. If you were trying to get into this inn to take something of Negi's, how would you do it?"

"Weeellllll… I'd take someone hostage, then do an exchange for the goods. But you were asking about actually getting in…" The green-haired puppet rocked her head back and forth enough that it made her entire body tilt with the motions. "Probably through the hot springs or roof."

The roof was… well, it was a roof. And the hot springs had a lot of steam? Naruto didn't see why those places were important, and voiced it.

Chachazero was quite willing to answer. "They're useful because they're often unguarded! The springs are already open-air and no windows have a good view of them (because of all them naked folks. Hahahaha, butts). And the roof doesn't have an entrance or a window, but that isn't a real barrier to me. That makes both of those hard to observe. Although if I had known beforehand that you were coming here, I would have been in before you ever arrived."

Her tone took a change to the gigglingly insane again as she said, in a voice like a little girl recalling a beautiful dance, "Oh! I think I might once have actually disemboweled someone like that. What a fun coincidence, huh? Anyway, why do you ask? I figure you got some sort of reason for that, right?"

So Naruto knelt by the low kotatsu she sat upon and, trying to ignore the chill that ran from his skull down his spine from her 'fun coincidence', relayed to Chachazero the events of the meeting below. This was, of course, frequently interrupted by giggles and morally repugnant suggestions from the doll on the table. The good sense she had somehow acquired left during this time, presumably to make room to ideas on how to inventively stab someone.

She terrified him. Or perhaps horrified him. Dolls could be creepy. Dolls with knives always were. Dolls that talked, only more so. A talking doll with a seemingly incessant need to talk about killing random people with the soul of a depraved mass murderer should not be permitted to exist, much less be permitted to... do whatever is was Chachazero could be described as doing. She didn't actually do much other than talk, really, but he had already covered that.

Naruto didn't know what to do with her. She came along for her own entertainment, but Naruto would far prefer it if she could find more amusement parked in front of a tv. Still, if he could put up with her at least for a little while there did seem to be positive sides.

"So," he began to distract Chachazero from her detailed explanation of the effects of various objects once shoved up someone's ass, "as you can tell, we're in a bit of a bind here."

"Yep!" she agreed with a smile. "You're so fucking dead. You're stuck here, and the enemy has the home turf advantage. They've completely outmaneuvered you so far without being seen so much as once, and you don't know how many there are. Even if they don't get the letter tonight, as a teacher Negi'll have to eventually go outside with your fleshy lady-targets because of the field trip."

Naruto sweatdropped. "That's a… very blunt way of putting it. But I don't think it would be a large group—I think they were mostly opposed to Negi coming along, and I don't know how they'd know about every person who would be able to help him."

"Hmhmhahaha. Heeheeheehee! I hope you're right! That would be much more exciting, huh? But you asked the question for a reason, right?"

This was the hard part. He tried to look at her straight in the eyes, but quickly dropped it down to the frilly neck of her itty bitty doll dress. Gazing into that stare made the urge to scream rise in his gullet. Naruto took a deep breath.

"Could you help me, then? I know how to make snares and some simple traps, but until an actual fight starts I don't feel like there's anything that I can actually do."

That magic of Negi's was incredible. With a barrier and some sort of trapping spells, it would be impossible to deny that the other boy was doing a lot more for the defense of the ryokan than he was. He… well, Naruto probably wouldn't have learned any jutsu for traps even if he had stayed, but if he had had more time at the Academy he might have known more than just a few setups designed to capture food.

"Ooooh! Wow!" squealed Chachazero, rocking back and forth in glee. "I didn't expect that! Yeah, yeah, I'll help, I didn't think that you would actually ask something like that! But…"

She paused for dramatic effect. "There are a few conditions."

"Which would be?" Naruto had a bad feeling about this. They were going to be ridiculous or insane.

"Right! Firstly, I am not currently holding something capable of drawing blood. If I am to help you, this must be rectified immediately."

Her demand was met with suspicious and narrowed eyes. "You want me to just hand you, the tiny psychopath, a weapon? I have absolutely no reason to believe you won't use it to stick me in the neck."

Chachazero laughed and laughed and began to sing a clumsy tune in that eerie voice of hers. "You worry that you're gonna diiiiiieeeeee / But don't you fret 'cause I won't lie! / I'd rather stab some other guy / And watch blood rain through all the niiiiiiiiggggghht! / But I'm afraid that I can't moooooove / Which I believe that you have proved? / A stabby thing I'd really love / So just know that would be enoooouuuuuggghh!/… For me to help you win!"

Naruto had to put his hands over his ears as the little doll belted out her hopefully improvised ditty, painfully lengthened notes and all. This was so much longer than the one back in Evangeline's house! Where did she learn to tell such awful poems?

The puppet hmm'd after she came giggling down from her singing high, and he had the impression that if she could move she'd be swinging her legs under the table. "So? So? Trust me yet? You ought to because it's a good idea. Eeyup. There's no way giving me sharp objects could possibly go wrong. I think I'm a pretty honest doll, right?"

Naruto gave her a sunken, deeply distressed glare. She. Was. Not. Helping.

"Alright, moving on! Secondly, if you want my help you have to… uh… set something on fire?"

He didn't think he heard that correctly, particularly seeing as how the confident doll's own voice took a questioning lilt towards the end of that. "You-you want me to… to… why?!"

"Well, I just sort of wanted you to do something now that you have to fulfill my conditions, and burning something down sounded sort of meaningful. And fire is pretty, so I thought it sort of fit?"

"…"

"…"

"…"

"ANYWAYS! Thirdly, you have to buy me an outfit during this trip. Maybe a pretty one with those frills and a little hat! Gothloli is best, but another style is alright as long as you don't get something silly. Some of those other Lolita dresses are just dumb, so you better be careful if you go that way!"

Naruto could only gaped openmouthed at Chachazero. How could she possibly go from _that_ to _this_? Was she insane or someth—oh. Right. "What?"

"I overheard one of your students while I was in your bag. There's this big film-cosplay-place-thing-place here in Kyoto, and I wanna new dress!" Chachazero told him with an innocent voice as her eyes shined happily. "Then when we get back I can show it off to Mistress and we can play and maybe put it in with my other outfits! And you know, it's not good for a girl to go three days without changing clothes…"

A small smile slipped across Naruto's face as he listened to her talk about her dress-to-be. When had he actually heard Chachazero talking about something normal like this? It was nice. Maybe like he was getting to see a little bit of who she was apart from…

"… especially once they get bloody! If they aren't taken care of the blood will turn brown and that isn't fun, and when it gets crusty it's all icky and gross and hard to clean off the cloth."

No, never mind. Any warm feelings to be considered destroyed via sudden glacial temperatures.

Naruto put a palm to his face to rub at his forehead. Dealing with Chachazero was making his head hurt worse. "Alright, let's move on to the next demand. Please. Very very quickly and without speaking of it further."

Green hair fell to the side as Chachazero curiously cocked her head. Somehow, her hat did not fall off. "Oh. Sure. Alright, next condition! Fourthly, you shouldn't let me become bored. Well, you are actually supposed to do that anyways since I'm your guest, so that doesn't count. So… um… alright, real fourth condition! Fourthly, you need to stab someone, cut them, or bash them so hard they die or something. Then show me something gory or bludgeon-y about it so it's fun for me, too. Because otherwise the not-actual fourth condition wouldn't be there."

The most reasonable response to hearing this was, of course, to fling oneself across the room and plaster themselves against the angle where floor and wall met. As a reasonable person, Naruto of course did this, manliness showing as he muffled his shriek.

"AHAHAHAHA EEheheheheeheehee! You really are just too funny! Get out from behind the couch, Naruto~… do you not like it?"

The blond glared at the unrestrained laughter coming from the shaking doll as he cautiously stepped out from cover, still keeping his distance from the monster in his room. "Of c-course! That's… that's… that's just sick. Not happening."

"Really?" Chachazero asked in a soft, wondering voice. "But you sort of have to, huh? After all, you need my help to actually be useful, right? So I need you to go stab some dude."

"No. You seriously expect me to do that?" Naruto demanded, his voice finding strength with his growing anger at her attempt to extort him into murder. "To kill someone just so you can get your little kick?"

Chachazero only nodded. "Ee-yup!"

She smiled cheerily as she so lightly said terrible words.

Heat flashed across his face at being thought so lightly of. What did she take him for? Uzumaki Naruto wasn't so shallow or cruel that he would murder someone just to get someone's help! And trying to make him kill someone… actually end a person's life, especially for something so trivial as this! Anger and indignation flushed him with heat. That warmth pushed away the cold pall of the terror that creepy Chachazero held over him, letting him stand tall for at least these words.

"Then think again," he bit out. "I'll figure the rest out myself—I won't murder a person just to get the help of a crazy doll that hasn't figured out when it should just stop talking! You are so damned disgusting, you know that?"

His resistance visibly surprised her, green eyes widening as he spoke. Naruto didn't give her a chance to collect herself, continuing, "But I'm nice enough to give you a bit of help, Chachazero. You said you wanted a weapon, right?"

A sharp movement of the hand from his pockets towards her face gave a loud *_thunk_* that sounded harshly in the small room.

The impact of the shuriken into Chachazero's forehead was enough to lift her into the air and knock her fully off of the table. She rolled once she hit the ground, green splaying around her from her disordered hair and her face settling into the tatami mats.

Naruto walked to his closet and grabbed one of the yukata provided freely by the ryokan. Chachazero started to say something to him, her voice surprised and indignant without a touch of giggles or that singsong tone. He ignored her as he went to the door, slid it open, and exited the room.

The foremost thought as he walked out the door, oddly enough, was mild surprise that it had taken that much for that tiny top hat to finally fall off her head.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note<strong>:

Seriously, has anyone ever looked at that class roster and thought that this manga should be completely redone 30 more times, each with a different girl as the deuteragonist? A good visual novel gets a completely different story out of just small changes like that. Negima would have been a godly VN.

Too much re-description of the last chapter in this one! And too few characters actually knowing what's going on. But both are actually necessary… btw, Konoka doesn't even remember what Naruto's angsting over. He can be sort of stupid, sometimes.

Also, I find it funny that Naruto is technically an alien.

Interestingly, although Japan has the highest ratio of vending machines to people in the world, few of them actually sell snacks. But they have plenty of drinks, if you're thirsty. They do have Kit Kat vending machines, though. To date, Japan has created more than 40 flavors (range from the delicious to the… not so much), and they release _limited edition Kit Kats_! The name, localized, is "kitto katsu", which can mean "you will surely win"/"to surely win"/"certain victory", which played a part in its success. Interestingly, it can instead be localized as to mean the exact opposite.

**Ryokan**: A ryokan is a type of traditional Japanese inn (sort of _the_ tradition inn), and can be found all over the country. It is built in that classic style of Japanese architecture, and has sliding doors, Japanese artwork, tatami floors, and some traditional Japanese features in the rooms that aren't necessarily common anymore. They provide free yukata to the guests to use at the inn, and almost always have common bathing areas (called "ofuro"), which preferably use water from/are onsen. The rooms have kotatsu for tables, which already have the stuff to make tea on them. Later, once dinner has been eaten, a lot of ryokan will have the staff move the table away and set out futon for the guests to sleep in.

**Onsen**: Hot springs! How did you _ever_ guess? Because Japan is volcanically active, it has a lot of hot springs. A large number have hotels or bathing facilities built due to them. At one point, they were all mixed gender, but once the West got involved in Japan most of them became split gender (although some have time set aside for mixed bathing). There is the idea of "_hadaka no tsukiai"_, or "naked companionship", a friendship where neither keeps anything hidden from the other (this is a case, I think, of taking an idea too seriously). A visitor is expected to thoroughly rinse themselves before entering the water so as not to dirty it. Onsen have a lot of minerals in them, so are traditionally considered to have healing powers. It is likewise traditional to go naked into an onsen—however, some places allow one to wear a towel into the water, although many others don't in the belief it makes the water unclean.  
>This ryokan allows towels—but Naruto's rapidly improving reading abilities can't quite tell that.<p>

**Shinobi**: A gender neutral word for ninja, while females can also be called kunoichi (there is not a male-specific term as far as I'm aware). Shinobi and ninja are respectively the kun'yomi and on'yomi readings of the same two kanji (忍者). The word "ninja" was actually not used much in history, while "shinobi" was the most common word for them in old documents. There are some other words people have used for ninja over time—monomi, nokizaru, rappa, kusa, and Iga-mono.

**Kyoto National Museum**: A museum made a bit before 1900, but that only received its current name in 1952. It primarily holds art treasures from temples and shrines, in addition to items from the Imperial Household Ministry. It's collection of artifacts from the Heian era is possibly the largest in Japan (Heian… makes me think of "_Heian Alien"_. Don't recognize it? Youtube will bless your ears with an answer). The museum focuses on its collection about pre-modern Japan (and to a lesser extent the rest of Asia), and is also known for having a large number of ancient Chinese and Japanese sutras.

"Onē-san" has the long vowel, but "ane-san" does not. I do not know why.

I considered explaining "baka" here, but know what? I won't. I've explained some other obvious and well-known stuff here, but I'm drawing the line with this one.

**Egyptian Faience**: It is a sintered-quartz ceramic that ends up being various shades of bright blue-green. It isn't made from clay so is not considered pottery (like normal faience is, which is completely different). It was symbolically associated with several aspects of Ancient Egyptian religion. It was used to make jewelry, decorative items, religious icons, cups, jars, etc, because it was… well… it's really pretty. Go look it up.

**Kaminaru-ryū**: Chamo used the wrong wording for Shinmei—however, the meaning is still the same (although I suppose that there's still a subtle difference or change in connotations between them). "God's Cry".

**Fortunetellers**: The original meanings of both 'oracle' and 'prophet' is that they were the voices for the word of [insert deity/deities here]. The words have seen more use than just in religious context, though, especially once we got all those lovely fantasy authors writing their stories. So, while each may speak the words of a great supernatural entity or god in this story, an oracle or prophet does not necessarily have that connection, and may still foretell the future. They stand at the pinnacle of the art of divination, and are at the level one cannot achieve through work—only through an extraordinary birth, the intervention of powerful outside forces, etc.. Below this, there are many other tiers of fortunetellers, some possessed of unique abilities and others simply titles one achieves after gaining enough power and skill.

**Oinomancy**: Divination through wine. Also called "oenomancy." There are many ways to perform this: you can spill wine on cloth or paper and interpret the stains, you can drink it and try to find meaning in the future from the taste and color of it, you can study the dregs at the bottom of the glass or cask of wine, or you can soak a cloth in it and observe how it changes color. The method Negi used, however, was to pour wine in a clear glass, then put a candle behind it—he then sat down with the lights off to try to see patterns the flame made in the wine. Because he's an actual wizard, he can get actual answers from divinations. And no, he never learned the method where he actually drinks alcohol to get an answer.

**Driromancy**: Divination via reading drops of blood. Too often, "-mancy" is used as a suffix to make something sound like a style or school of magic. However, it actually refers to divination—"manteia" meaning prophecy or soothsaying. Necromancy, for instance, originally referred to making predictions by communing with corpses, rather than making zombies and what have you, and a pyromancer is someone who looks into a fire to read the future. A better word for what –mancy is now used for would by "-urgy" which means "to work". So it would be necrourgy, drirourgy, phobourgy, etc. (although the "u" might replace the "o". I can't find any rule for that.)

**Auramancy**: Divination through looking at people's auras. When Negi met Asuna, he said he saw heartbreak in her future—though in Japanese, he said she had a heartbreak "sō" (相), which in this usage means "aspect" or "seeming" and actually has a specific use by fortune-tellers (and of the grouping of types of fortune-telling, "sōsen" refers to the ones based on visually examining the subject, rather than, say, using cards or birthdays). It doesn't say how he knew that, so I'm going to go with this. Why was Asuna's imminent heartbreak so clear to him when he didn't show signs of such spontaneous precognition elsewhere in the manga? Here, it is due to two reasons; firstly, that Negi replacing Takahata as 3-A's teacher was one of the most pivotal points in his own destiny, so he was sensitive to her reaction to it; secondly, because of the powerful preexisting connection between them that neither knows about. Without those, he likely wouldn't have noticed—he's a genius, but not a natural at divination. Yes, I remember his Cassiopeia modification, but that used brilliant applications of simple predictions, which is more along the lines of superlative mastery of fundamental spells than great foresight magic.


	13. A Kansai Agent

If I had a penny for every idea of a story that I wanted to do but had no time to write, I would buy Negima, Naruto, and the companies that publish them. But as the universe operates by less kind rules, all those ideas just lie about, leaving me with ownership of none of the above. Credit goes to the authors for their stories and characters.

Akamatsu's finally put out the sequel/spin-off of Negima. UQ Holder is based in the future, though, and follows Negi's grandson. But… Negi's dead, and a number of things happened, which I have decided occurred because the story is set in the alternate timeline Asuna woke up in. It very likely isn't, but I must keep safe my headcanon that post-Negima, the heroes and the definitely-final-boss-not-quite-villain had happy endings. UQ Holder seems somewhat… darker than the original.

I was unfortunately forced to break my promises to some of you to give a fight scene on Chapter 12. Hopefully this chapter makes up for it.

Chapter title is based on "A Cerberus Agent" from Mass Effect 3, by Sam Hulick (one of several composers for the game).

* * *

><p><span><strong>Chapter 13:<strong>

**A Kansai Agent**

Nibbling thoughts about how what he had done to Chachazero might have been _really REALLY bad_ were very firmly ignored. Instead, he somehow drifted to thinking about another roommate, with yet another set of problems.

Zazie. Zazie the demon.

'_Zazie the traitor_,' a part of his mind echoed in disgusting mimicry of the beast.

How long had she been looking into his dreams? When did she first see the rot that had sunk into his very bones? When had she decided to expose him on the train? Naruto could taste stomach acid at the back of his throat as he thought about when she might have first pretended to care about him.

He tried to stop thinking and picked up the pace as he hurried to nowhere. His power walk took him downstairs, where he changed into his yukata before taking off again.

But once he returned to the first floor and had nowhere else to go, he could not prevent his mind from returning to the unpleasant thoughts that he had futilely tried to escape from. His breath slowly escaped his lungs as he walked alongside the wall at a sloth's pace, dragging his fingertips against it with each step.

Zazie had stayed up all night waiting for him to come home. She had made food, had shown him television, and had calmly dealt with his mistakes as he tried to get used to having a roommate. She had quietly watched on without judging him. She was just _nice_.

And it was a lie.

Naruto stopped and sagged against the wall, feeling the energy drain out of him as his legs turned to lead. His forehead pressed against the cool surface alongside his forearm, but the slight chill did nothing to distract him from the weight forming in his stomach. It was cold, and it was dark. It was hard, grotesque, wrapped in spikes at the bottom of his gut.

His fingernails scratched at the surface of the wall as Naruto grasped at nothing. The urge to vomit continued to rise even as he fought it. The betrayal of something that…which he … how foolish of him. Stammering in his own mind.

Why did the thought hurt when they had hardly known each other long enough for it to really be called 'betrayal'? There was almost n—there was nothing to begin with. Yet that notion felt worse than the thought of it being a lie. Thin scrapings of the wall drifted down to the floor while the rasp of scraping nails scratched down the hall.

The demon within was bound and couldn't alter Naruto's mind, but what might the demon without have done to him? Zazie had read his dreams, but had she looked similarly into his thoughts? His memories? He could only guess at how low he had sunk in her eyes.

And she had tricked him to make him fall asleep on the train, where the Kyuubi's tearing of his body would be exposed for all to see. It was painfully easy to imagine how horrifying that would be for her classmates, but it would also catch the attention of Negi and the other magic-users connected to the school. He could have tried to pass it off as something without root in a demon's hate, but once they were curious he was certain that the mages would have been able to find the demonic power that had somehow stayed hidden, as well as its source. He didn't imagine that their response could be positive—he'd have probably have been lucky if they only tried to kill him.

But—and Naruto clung to the unexpected lifeline of a word like a man lost at sea—she hadn't come along on the train. Surely she would have wanted to be there when he was revealed? To guarantee things went as planned and enough people saw him that the wizards would hear about it, and if nothing else to ensure that he didn't keep himself awake.

She wouldn't even have been in danger. Zazie didn't know he'd be talking to his tenant, so there should have been no way he'd know it was her. Yet, she didn't join the field trip at all.

The nausea subsided by the smallest of amounts.

Naruto bashed his forehead against the wall, the sudden pain pulling his attention from everything else. This was getting confusing and he had an inn to protect.

With brain-damage induced determination, Naruto looked for a window so he could walk up to the roof. Insane or not, he didn't doubt that Chachazero was right about it. It wouldn't be hard for someone with powers to just leap up there, even if it was slanted. Even if they chose not to just break through its surface, it would give them easy access to all the windows on the building with just a little maneuvering.

Once Naruto examined the tiled and sloped top of the structure, he walked down the walls to the ground so he could give the still-working Negi and Chamo and rather bored Asuna a wave before heading inside to patrol. It was as eventful as it sounded, and despite the circumstances Naruto's thoughts wove around with all the steadiness of a drunken dancer.

What was a 'cosplay'? Was it tasty? Where was Kaede? Despite making more than a few rounds through the building he never caught sight of her. He was a little worried. How did a girl like Chizuru become so scary?"

He still felt dirty. Far less so than earlier, but now that his mind wasn't focusing so much he felt the urge to clean more than a simple sink could provide. When would he get a chance to wash them? How did 'getting closer to one's students' work, anyways?

How would he fare in a fight against something stronger than the gangs of Tanzaku? What could he do before the enemy showed up other than sit and wait? How the hell could Chachazero expect him to… to just kill someone? Just like that, fulfilling some sick demand for a doll's satisfaction. Hmph. What should he have expected, asking her for a favor? Why had he lost his temper at Chachazero behaving the way he knew that Chachazero would?

What was happening back in the world he came from? Had the Godaime Hokage given up on finding him? Did Konoha look the same? Was the small ramen shop that a lonely kid once wandered into still in business?

But these questions formed largely from Naruto's attempts to avoid focusing on the topic he had abandoned, and he could not prevent his eventual failure as his thoughts turned once again towards Zazie.

That small hope that he had to break away from before it grew out of proportion hadn't disappeared. She hadn't followed through on her accused attempt to out him. The only truth the entity had forced upon him was that she was a demon.

And therein lay the problem. His roommate was, indeed, a demon. Naruto couldn't help but break into violent shivers, thinking of the idea for the first time without the protection of anger. How terrible must a demon's nature be, when even one such as he—when the rotten taint and memories and venomous words—was so…

But could Zazie hide that? If she was so terrible, was that indeed something that could be hidden?

If she wasn't—if an actual demon _wasn't_ all but dripping in a miasma of disgusting and offensive malice—then that meant that Nar—

His mind stopped, unable to genuinely imagine the completion of that thought.

Hot breath pushed past his lips as Naruto's chest heaved for air. His entire body ached from muscles clenched so tightly that they quivered. He blinked and shook his head before looking around with a stiff neck, catching from the number on a nearby door that he had returned to the first floor. Had he truly been so deep in his thoughts that his body had acted on its own accord?

Naruto gave a slow glance around the hallway, and was quietly grateful to find that he had lost himself so close to the outdoor onsen. Yes, Chachazero had pointed it out as a weak point… but if he were to be honest with himself, he just wanted to scrub himself and soak in the water until he turned into an oyster.

There was a saying or something about that, right?

The gentle shadows of later twilight graced the sky outside the nearest window, and the impatient moon already cast its light over the clouds that drifted, as grey mountains, over the former capital of Japan. It was probably a pity that the only one in the inn paying attention to the sight was Naruto, who simply thought it looked a little pretty and otherwise ignored it.

It did, however, tell him that it was getting late, and that he had to prepare for the rest of the night. Which, in this particular case, meant taking a bath.

Naruto slid open the door to the men's changing room, pleased to find it empty as he entered. It helped that there weren't many other males in the building, but he wasn't fond of exposing himself to other people. He stepped out of the ryokan's yukata and geta, folding the clothing up and setting it in a small cubby alongside his normal clothing. An angry blush hit his face as he looked at it. It was stupid to carry around a second pair of clothes, all because he chose a terrible time for an argument.

Pushing the thoughts aside for the sake of his self-image, he moved over to take a stool by the showers, grabbing a brush and soap to get the dirt off him so it didn't befoul the water outside. Turning the heat as high as it could go, Naruto furiously attacked his body, scrubbing until he felt as clean as he could ever feel and nearly tearing out his hair as his fingers dragged through and foamed it up. His blond hair was pretty thick, but more importantly it was hard to break a habit; at an abandoned shack in Tanzaku, Naruto was constantly on the lookout for lice or fleas taking up residence on his head.

Simply another of the immeasurable ways his new home was greater than his old.

Once as clean as he could be, and reasonably certain that he wasn't going to contaminate the hot spring once he entered it, the blond grabbed a towel to wrap around his waist. The cool wind chilled his wet body—more so as he was healing from the scalding heat of the shower—and making him glad for the cloth he'd used to hide himself.

The onsen was larger than Naruto had imagined the hot spring to be. When he stepped outside he was greeted with the sight of steam-filled pool big enough that it had a couple large stone 'islands' rising from its surface that gave more area for visitors to sit by, and the pool had a number of rocky peninsulas jutting from its sides to provide some privacy to those who didn't want to socialize with other bathers. It was much bigger than the size of the inn warranted, and if Naruto were to guess he would say that nearly every guest in the ryokan would be able to sit within comfortably.

It was that huge.

And, at the moment, all his. There wasn't a soul in sight, to Naruto's quiet relief. However, being alone and having sole possession of the hot spring did not make cannonballing into a body of water that only reached his hip any more of a good idea than it would have been had there been anyone else sitting in it to watch his painful mistake.

Once Naruto finished gasping and moaning from the pain of smashing his tailbone into the smooth, worn surface below the water at the speed of stupid, he tenderly leaned back against the outcropping he had landed himself by. Despite being made of rock, it wasn't very rugged at all—he didn't know if the natural spring had worn away at the edges or if they had been carefully ground away once the ryokan was built, but Naruto didn't imagine many people would visit hot springs that were too uncomfortable to relax in.

The heat of the water rose just shy of the point that someone would find it painful, and he sighed as the warmth soaked into him. It worked in deeper than only the water could, slowly kneading stiff muscles along his neck and back into something resembling useful condition and setting a fire that burnt away some of the black chill that had sunk into the marrow of his bones and the lining of his gut since the day had worsened.

And how it had. Fortunately, it wasn't to the point of no return. They just had to think of a…

Well, maybe Negi and Chamo had to think. Relying on him or Asuna might not work out all that well. They had their moments of thoughty-ness, sure, but…

Naruto spent ten, maybe fifteen minutes just lying in the water with only his head poking out of it. It wasn't good to put one's hair in the hot spring, after all, but his head wasn't particularly colder despite this. The onsen produced a lot of steam, much more than he thought it should have for its temperature and size. Maybe they put something in it? It wasn't as hot as freshly boiled water, but it was still at a high enough temperature that the air above the water still felt warm. The fresh night breeze, while not strong enough to blow it away, still made the steam dance enough that it didn't feel like it was pressing down on him.

He sighed, as despite the nice, incredible, warm, fantastic, pleasurable, wonderful, comfortable comfort of comfortably lounging about absorbing the heat like a sponge, he still came here for a purpose. Well, two purposes, but he could relax more after he got the most important one out of the way.

Pulling himself around under the water with his arms, Naruto began to search for any signs that the Kanto Magic Association had tinkered with the hot spring. The worries that had kept intruding onto his mind tried to do so again, but the gentle yet forceful pressure of the soothing heat smoothed them away until they were but occasional thoughts crossing his mind and quickly disappearing, concerns for another time that the current moment had no need for.

His first sweep was to try to see or feel the bottom of the pool and to look over all of the rocky protrusions rising out of the water—he personally thought that would have been a great place to scratch in some sort of seal, but there was nothing. But it allowed him to go over the width and breadth of the pool, and Naruto had to acknowledge that it was truly beautiful, as though he hadn't thought it already. Were it not for his movements the water would be still as fogged glass, and almost as silent.

This left other places to look through… but all of them were unfortunately outside of the pool. There were some trees just before the wooden fence that served as the boundary between the hot spring and the world, and old-style wood umbrellas provided shade for a couple corners of the onsen. More large stones were set into the ground leading up to the changing rooms, and both bushes and flowers were planted around the hot spring to emphasize its connection to nature.

Any of these could hold some sort of magical misdeed. However, investigating would mean leaving the water. Naruto cast a glance towards his towel, folded up on the ground beside one of the spherical lamps that lit the hot spring at night. It was blurred from the thick steam, but it didn't look large enough to warm him once he left the safe confines of the spring.

His debate with himself over whether or not to get out of the water was long and fierce, and given time he might have successfully argued himself into stepping onto dry land.

But then he heard footsteps.

They were quieter even than the careful opening and closing of the sliding door, and he doubted that someone with normal hearing would have noticed the soft _pit-pat_ of those feet on the cracked stone tiles leading to the hot spring.

Naruto silently cursed as he ducked behind the islet he had been resting against, thankful for the tall pillar of rock formed on its right side. That sort of thing was very useful for hiding.

He felt like an idiot and his cheeks burned from embarrassment. A burning sense of shame at the thought of bathing with another person overcame him. As a demon host he hadn't exactly gone to the hot spring many times, but… in the nude, amongst others, there wasn't the slightest shield at all between himself and the entire world, even one so flimsy as clothing.

The demon host hadn't known about rape when he was a young kid back in Konoha and so never had that fear, but Naruto knew now he would have never faced that danger—no citizen of the Leaf would have risked contaminating themselves like that. But without even the flimsy barrier of clothing, there was nothing to protect him and nothing to conceal him. It shoved his weakness and vulnerabilities in his face, while he was surrounded by a dozen, two dozen, even three, older men who loathed him.

Who knew that could make a boy who dreamed of being a ninja start thinking?

With slow movements so as to make no sound and produce only gentle waves, Naruto carefully leaned around the wall to see who intruded on his bath. Seriously, what sort of idiot goes to the hot spring at this time of day, all alone?

The thick steam prevented him from making out more than their figure, but he could make out enough of the figure and movement to make out that it was a girl. Luckily, that same haze also made it harder to notice the narrow slice of face peeking around the edge of a narrow boulder.

Why had no one told him this was mixed bathing? That was kind of important!

Steps possessed of a casual grace slowly brought her closer to the water's edge. As she came closer he could make out the shape of her hair, one side falling freely, the other still tied up into a dark and spiky fan. In her hands she carried one of the wooden buckets provided for the hot spring, and in the other she held what he knew had to be a lengthy sword.

It wasn't hard to identify her once he could see more of her outline, even through the thick steam. The calm and soothing effects of the onsen vanished like lightning in the night as Naruto's eyes narrowed at the misty sight of Setsuna.

There was no room for him to focus on anything but her. He recalled the small run-in on the train. Remembered the razor's edge in that glare, poised to cut him apart. If she found him here, with no one else around… with that sort of look in her eyes, she could really try to kill him.

The very thought set his heart pounding as though the fight had already started.

Setsuna's thin form knelt by the water's edge to dip the bucket into the water. It no doubt quickly filled in her hand, but it seemed like she paid little attention to it. Her attention seemed caught instead on matters elsewhere.

"So he really is a wizard," Naruto heard her muse in a voice soft enough he had to strain to hear it. "Well, I was already told that. It should make the rest of this trip interesting, to say the least. Although I doubt Negi-sensei would make much of a difference if he hasn't even noticed _me_."

Despite the thrill at the back of his neck at the chance of fighting, he had already known he had to sneak away—now it was only more important. He raised his hands from the water to clasp together his fingers at such a careful (meaning slow) rate that was almost painful.

Being exposed in front of all those people—the shame, the fear of it, almost drove him to avoid bathing entirely. But he knew that he was dirtied long before he knew why, and every whisper of the villagers only made the desire to wash the grime off of his body grow.

So he became someone else. The way they explained the Henge no Jutsu in the Academy had been weird, and he never understood it. The way he had used was so much easier, so… natural. Why would he shape a chakra pattern around himself instead of filling himself with chakra and just… changing?

But looking like not-Naruto, even if "she" was still naked, was enough to put another barrier there. They couldn't see how twisted he was if it wasn't him.

It probably said something about the Uzumaki that he never even considered that he could have used the same concept to avoid being the target of Konoha's ire.

But another girl in the baths wouldn't be suspicious, even to this treacherous Setsuna. The smoke of transformation would blend into the steam. He just had to be a good actor.

It would have been a good idea, had it worked. However, Naruto missed one critical point. It could be excused, perhaps, as he had never tried to sneak around in the water before, but his ignorance made it no less a flaw.

As he raised his hands to form the seal his hands and forearms came out of the water. Setsuna was still, and the bucket wasn't moving from its place under the surface. So there was no other sound to hide the _plips_ and _plops_ of water falling from his skin back into the spring.

It wasn't loud, but the ninja wasn't the only one who had come to the hot spring to investigate a possible weakness in the building's security.

Setsuna's immediately broke away from her quiet considerations, hard eyes glaring in the direction of the noise. It was just the sound of water hitting water… but the towel that drew her eye by the water's edge made it more than that. Who would be silent as another came to the onsen, keeping so perfectly quiet and still that she hadn't noticed them? Who would be here so late in the first place, this vulnerability in the building she was to protect?

It took only the shortest time to consider. No, it couldn't be some innocent bystander. She made her move.

The sound of breaking glass broke the silence as her flung bucket shattered one of the lights, a sound repeated when she gave her nodachi a sharp swing to the side, launching its sheath over the water to pierce another sphere.

"Who's there? Show yourself!" she challenged into the seemingly empty hot spring. The steam clouded her sight, an impairment made worse by the shadows that had fallen over that billowing whiteness. But it would pose a greater problem for the scum that thought to sneak in. It was only a minor weakness for one trained in the ways of Shinmei-ryū.

The briefest of moments passed without reply, and Setsuna feared he might try to escape. "Don't think I'll let you get away!" She struck.

Setsuna leapt across the steaming water to a wide rock reaching just a couple inches above the surface. She landed in a low stance, her leg extended to the left to take her down so she could bring her sword to bear as intended.

"_Shinmei-r__yū Secret Technique: Zanganken_!"

Chi flowed through her weapon to allow the steel to slice straight through three feet of solid rock, cleaving through the base of the stone pillar. With her other hand infused with power she struck it, pushing the heavy weight onto her unseen observer.

"Wha—?"

It made a resounding splash as it fell into the water, revealing… no one. Setsuna's eyes widened as she saw nothing more than barely visible strands of severed hair floating in the newly made waves. How had he disappeared?

She silently cursed as she focused on her environment. She pulled the nodachi to a diagonal guard position across her torso, paying no heed to her nudity. Something so minor had no place once blades were drawn.

A *_poff_* sound called her attention to her right where she could make out a dark shape, leaning low as it darted as fast as it could with the water slowing its movements, short blade ready to thrust. Setsuna stepped forwards into the water to meet it before it could reach her, her own weapon lashing out.

Yet even as she could see her sword strike, she felt no resistance as it passed through the intruder. No sooner had she hit him than he disappeared, to her brief confusion—a confusion that left Setsuna with only the slightest second to detect the attack that came from behind her.

A dagger—'_A kunai?_'—stabbed down at her shoulder, and were it not for the sound of sharp metal cutting the air and the harsh rise in anger accompanying it she might not have noticed the attack at all.

As it was, Setsuna sidestepped the blow meant for her right shoulder and grabbed hold of his wrist, holding her assailant in place as she jabbed her hilt into his arm socket. Pulling with her grip and twisting deeper with the hilt, she used his momentum to hurl him over her shoulder and into a rock.

She silently cursed as she made out her attacker pulling himself to his feet without significant injuries. It would have helped if her throw had dislocated his arm, but no such luck. Her eyes narrowed further while she pulled her nodachi into a more aggressive position. It was hard to make anything out, but the outline looked like that of his illusionary double. The threat was in front of her, and seemed perfectly willing to harm her, or perhaps kill.

There was really no telling what depths such as he would be willing to sink to...

Setsuna lunged forwards. She struck out twice in quick succession, the difficult-to-see form of her attacker—not large, she noted—managing to use his kunai to deflect the first upwards, the next off to the left. But she could tell he wasn't experienced at fighting blade to blade, and her third, diagonal swing was barely pushed upwards at all. She smirked.

She stepped into his space, crowding him as she spun her sword around. For any other swordsman these close quarters would be a death wish against a knife wielder, but the Shinmei School had no such weakness; her grip reversed, she stabbed downwards, the tip of the nodachi catching the ring at the base of his kunai and tearing it from his grasp. It fell into the water, swiftly knocked away with a sweeping foot as she adjusted her stance.

He had enough time to gasp in surprise before she bashed him in the face with her hilt and struck his dazed head with a heavy roundhouse kick.

He fell into the water, but still pulled himself together quickly enough to roll to his right and escape the follow-up slash she had directed towards the sound of his splash. She knew he couldn't keep evading her for long. He was as naked as she (although the steam fortunately spared her the details), and he didn't seem to have the skill where bare hands were as dangerous as steel.

That said, stone was pretty dangerous too, and Setsuna quickly revised her estimate as the boy, after almost stumbling over it, lifted up the boulder she had tried to knock onto him. That had been _heavy_, but he lifted the large armful of rock with only little effort!

With an unnecessary shout he charged at her, holding the large stone in front of him like a battering ram or shield. She scoffed. Hadn't he seen her earlier attack? Stone wasn't a barrier to her!

She again called out the name of the Shinmei technique, thrusting forwards with her sword. Like a fool, he placed the rock in front of himself, and her blade easily pierced it. But as soon as its tip pierced the rock's opposite side, the boy flung the stone to his right.

Caught off-guard, Setsuna could only cry out as her weapon was wrenched from her hand by hundreds of pounds of boulder. Had she tried to hold on, she didn't doubt that the sudden and awkwardly-positioned weight would have snapped her wrist, at the very least.

Her exclamation covered up his own words, and all she could catch was, "—_imi no Jutsu_."

Her gaze instantly snapped to her attacker, ready to defend herself from some spell or chi assault—but in his place, impossibly, was her sword stuck in the rock, the same that had just been thrown to the side. Her instincts screamed at her. Acting on that impulse she leapt towards it, tossing a glance towards the space where she had thought her sword had landed earlier. It wasn't so far away that the mist could hide that there was nothing there but water, shook by waves as the boy struck where she had stood only a moment earlier.

Had he replaced himself with the weapon to reposition himself for another unorthodox attack? She grimaced as she reached for her sword, only to be forced back again by another leaping strike. She sorely wished she had fought someone who used such techniques before, in a battle with lower stakes. That experience would have been helpful.

He was cocky though, and again he advanced. The punch he tried to land on her shoulder lacked refinement, and was caught by the wrist which she again used to throw him when her leg swept one of his out of the water.

That mistake cost him as he was sent flying into another pile of rocks, smashing into it before skidding into the water. He was far enough away that she could hardly tell him from the surrounding rock, but she heard him try to stand. Clouding the onsen hadn't been the advantage she thought it would be, not if her enemy could make his way around in it as easily as she and was stealthier than her ears could track. If he got up before she reached him he could again disappear into the haze.

Setsuna would have none of that—she'd had enough of his tricks.

She dashed towards her opponent, the speed of her movement even through the water causing her black hair to flutter. He'd reached a crouch as she approached him, but his face was open as she struck down with a powerful kick.

It didn't reach his steam-clouded face at all. One of his hands had managed to catch her blow despite the force she put behind it. It was mere inches from his face, but it was stopped nonetheless.

The boy stuck out with his other hand to clutch at the arm closest to him, but he had the disadvantage of a shorter reach. Setsuna wouldn't be caught so easily, and struck aside his extended limb to deliver a hammering blow to the top of his head. She distantly observed that from this distance, she could tell that it was a golden blond.

The strike was enough to loosen his grip, allowing her to get jump out of his reach. But he was a stubborn one and didn't seem willing to leave it at that—from his crouching position he took his own jump towards her, his haze-blurred arm pulled back to strike at her face.

His rush was fast—too fast for her to adjust her stance. Setsuna blocked it with both arms, confident in her ability to stop a single attack. She immediately regretted the decision. The force of the blow was such that she feared that her bones might crack, and a pulsing pain reached down to the marrow of her forearms.

What the hell did he _eat?_ Where was the build to go with that kind of force?

The power she was using to defend herself wouldn't be enough; with a second of focus Setsuna doubled the amount of chi in use, devoting a full half of it solely to her protection. She would have to end this quickly, if she was to burn through chi at twice her normal rate.

It took but a short moment, but that wasn't wasted by her enemy. It was a sign that her training was still insufficient—she needed to be faster, stronger. Far stronger than she was now, or she would make a better valet than bodyguard.

The boy had landed, twisting around to the side after his attack was blocked. Her brief defensive action let him go on the offensive again, and as soon as she was at the end of his reach he launched a straight punch at her face.

It was fast—now that it had reached the stage of the straightforward exchange of blows, she could see that this boy wasn't just about strength or surprise. She smacked it aside with the back of her wrist and was forced to step back as he continued to attack. Each of his blows had to be deflected or dodged completely, leaving her with little opportunity to take back the offensive. After a seemingly tireless series of attacks he made a horizontal cross to catch her between his fists, which she dodged by simple expedient of dropping to a crouch.

His failed attack left him open, and her fist gladly took advantage of it to plant itself in his stomach. The powerful impact on his abdomen forced the breath out of him with a loud gasp as he folded over, only to be shoved back by Setsuna's shoulder as she surged to her feet. She narrowly avoided being clipped in the head by a fist as he tried to keep her back while he regained his balance.

She thought she had the measure of her opponent, by now. Though she didn't recognize the school, Setsuna could still tell that his stances were born from an actual style, as were a number of his attacks. That said, they were marred by the fundamental mistakes of someone who had never mastered the basics or had perhaps abandoned his training before it was completed.

He relied more on his speed and strength than skill and seemed to like improvising; further, he was noticeably better at hand-to-hand than he had been with that kunai. She imagined he had experience fighting with his fists, and used weapons less—at least in actual combat. His clear propensity for sneak attacks made it clear to her that he knew about his lack of technique and, perhaps unable to or not knowing how to correct that, sought to work around it with deceit.

He stumbled some distance away before regaining his footing, so he was ready when he met her charge. Her assailant answered with a wide and arcing kick to her midsection, or tried to. Setsuna leapt over the dangerous attack legs-first to catch the boy's head between her calves in a vice-like grip; the world twisted as she violently flung her weight backwards and down, the motion sending his still-trapped head crashing down to the ground in an arc as her legs swung along with the curve of her body at chi-powered speed.

"_Shinmei-ry__ū Ukigumo: Sakura Sanka!"_

Her movements retained the smoothness of Shinmei-ryū, and the motion used to smash his head through the water into the stone below transferred naturally into a handspring that returned her to her feet. Water sprayed high into the air and fell down like rain from the force of the impact Those in the occident called the technique a "Frankensteiner", but the Shinmei School held the far older, and more elegant, name.

The boy lay motionless in the water. In addition to the above, she doubted he'd had much experience fighting anyone stronger than him—or as strong, for that matter. Even without training, a couple of his mistakes wouldn't have been there if he had faced opponents that pushed him. Although that might not have always been true, if how easily he bounced back from her other attacks was any indication. But too-wide swings and easily-broken form had sped her victory along, so she had no cause to complain.

Because he was smaller than her it was easy to flip him over—she didn't need him drowning in the onsen. He was muscular, but not nearly to the point to justify the strength she had felt earlier. She could only assume magic was to blame for his power and speed, as she hadn't felt him use another source of power in their fight… but she was hesitant to accept her own answer. Sorcerers as a rule weren't eager to engage in fistfights, after all.

'_Although if he was one, I doubt another magic-user would break in once they know someone of the Shinmei School is here,'_ Setsuna thought to herself as she moved forwards to take a look at her surprise attacker's face, _'So perhaps next time they'll send a warrior. This one wasn't bad at all, but he wasn't exactly on my'_—"KYAAAH!"

The last was shouted aloud as a hand grabbed her forearm and a foot found her stomach, hurling her over the boy and back-first into the water with enough force to smash through it and crack the stone below. Or it would have, had she not rolled with the throw and spun to her feet after skidding over the water's surface.

Maybe he had become annoyed at being juggled about the hot spring.

Setsuna shot him a glare that would have set him aflame had they not been in the water, and had glares combustive properties. Another of those damnable deceptions! She had to make a conscious effort not to grind her teeth together at this latest trick; her teeth were saved as he charged, pulling all her attention towards him.

She dashed forwards to meet his attack, launching a swift quartet of blows to his face and torso. None of them connected; instead of facing her fist and palm strikes he suddenly bent back at the waist with a sharp, uncomfortable-looking motion. He pushed off with his hands and feet to tumble around her, twisting over the kick she sent to stop him with like a spastic snake dodging a mongoose.

When he spun to his feet behind her, she had to acknowledge this as his most impressive display of dexterity and reflexes yet. And the most disturbing. He used the moment to swing his hand down as a hammering fist at the back of her neck.

At least, she assumed so—she could only hear him, and feel the wind against the nape of her neck. But as focused on her entire environment as she was, to ensure he wasn't switching with another bunshin, that was enough warning.

She side- and back-stepped to switch places with her hot spring attacker in a simpler and more graceful movement than what he had done, grabbing his arm and pulling it along with her. This had gone on for long enough, and if he was only a distraction he had kept her here for too much time; she had to end it now. With his limb overstretched behind him she struck at the junction of his shoulder and arm.

With the sickening grate of bone on bone Setsuna popped the limb out of its socket.

The blond screamed at the sudden agony of the dislocated arm, a sound cut short as she stepped back and kicked him across the pool and repeated when he landed on his injured shoulder. The sound of that pain made something in her tremble uneasily.

For all her practice and determination, she had yet to kill an opponent. That scream of pain—that too was unfamiliar. Not that she had never injured an enemy before, but this cry gave her a sense of aimless discomfort.

But still… her duty was too great for her to pause, or succumb to hindering emotions. If she could not drive him away after questioning him, then she would have to finish him.

Her certainty didn't quell the tightness in her chest nor the discomfiture at the thought. And her moody thoughts didn't break her intent search for opponent.

If she hadn't been watching for him, she wouldn't have noticed the small movement of one dark blur to another. His arm was reaching for one of the rocks near him, but why—

She heard the rasp of metal on stone and flung herself into the water. The swish of blades cutting air sounded over her head before thudding loudly into the wooden fence.

Where the hell had that come from? Setsuna pushed herself to her feet and advanced on him once more, seeing more clearly as he lunged across the pool for another of the large stones rising from the onsen. She leapt to the left just in time to avoid whatever weapon next hit the fence.

He'd hidden weapons in the rocks! When the hell did he have time to do that? She leapt onto the nearest of the stones to dash at him without the slower action of moving through water.

The boy didn't go for another weapon and instead started to back away from her. He only just managed to reach the water's edge when she landed in front of him, palm snapping down to incapacitate him for good wi—

Setsuna cried out as something long and hard leaped up from the water and fiercely jabbed into the back of her left knee. She fell onto her side as her balance was stolen from her while the boy leapt up, something falling from his hand… her sheath?!

Her eyes closed in reflex from the water splashing into them, but she could nonetheless felt him attempt to kick her; pushing into the bottom of the hot spring with her hands, she lifted her lower body out of the water to return the favor with a right-legged swing to the face, but with enough chi running through her leg to make her blow go double the speed of his own. She heard his gasp as she knocked the air out of him with a solid hit to his side, and the splash as he was launched away.

Setsuna rose to her feet, tossing her nodachi's sheath out of the water. They were right beside one of the shattered lights—she had no idea if he had tried to bring her over here or if he simply took advantage of the opportunity. Either way, it had been effective; her left knee throbbed and shook from his first real hit of the fight. She could barely use it to support her weight, but she doubted she could run with it.

She doubted there was any lasting damage, but she would have to take care of her leg once she finished him off or the swelling would be nearly as dangerous in the short term. Perhaps she could approach a certain child mage and see if he knew any healing spells.

He had disappeared into the steam again. But before she could think her first mental invective against him, she heard a quiet, pained sound that could only be described as a cross between a gasp and a moan.

Setsuna turned towards the sound and carefully began to stalk towards it. She searched as thoroughly as her eyes could and listened with greater dedication for any hint that he had readied another trick. As such, she was able to notice the tip of an object protruding from the water.

Closer inspection—requiring her hands in the dark haze—revealed something that made her stony face crack a small smile.

"_Zanganken!"_

The moment her hand found the hilt of her discarded sword she swung into the technique, shearing through the mineral trap that had stolen it from her. The boy cursed in a language she didn't recognize (although the tone of swearing was certainly easy to place).

A quiet feeling of relief flowed through her—it was nearly over. Reacquired blade in hand, she darted from stone to stone towards the sound until she saw him at the end of the pool by the other broken light. He reached out to the lamp, then swung his arm at her.

Setsuna's blade knocked the hurled shards of glass aside as she took one final leap. She cut another shard out of the air before landing in front of him. The boy grasped desperately for another object, but all his hands found was his own towel.

He tried to move, but he wasn't fast enough to avoid her as she shoved him against the rim of the onsen. Her sword went instantly to his throat, edge pressed against him hard enough that only a touch more pressure from her would end in blood.

She grabbed his hair with her other hand, preventing him from making another getaway with that substitution technique. She stepped in until her face was only inches away from his, showing her those blue eyes and whisker tattoos.

Setsuna fought back a grimace. She wasn't surprised—no, there had been enough glimpses and hints over their scuffle that she could only have missed that it was him had she been blind—but looking into the face of the one who had forced his own students into poisoning his class brought about an unexpected bout of disgust. That some part of the Kansai Magic Association approved of such behavior was equally nauseating.

She pulled the bastard's head up to look into her eyes, intent on dragging every scrap of information she could out of Uzumaki Naruto. "So, the Kan—"

The rough fabric of his towel pressed against her stomach, and between its folds she could feel the sharp point of a kunai resting just above her navel.

"So _you're_ the one!" he snarled with bared teeth. "You're the one responsible for what happened to Makie and Ayaka. You may cut my throat, but I swear upon the Gedou Mazou I'll see you bleed for what you've done!

"I didn't think anyone in 3-A would be so sick as to violate their classmates' minds and poison her friends, but I guess optimism really is for only fools, huh? The ermine was right all along! You're an assassin from the Kansai Magic Association!"

Wait.

What?

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note<strong>:

My first fight scene! Please give me your input on the chapter and fight scene, so I can improve my fighting writing in the future. Pity it wasn't one where I could demonstrate the nifty ninja toys he took out of his scroll.

Remember how I mentioned back in chapter 4 that Naruto had a better Henge than most because he was the jinchuuriki to a fox? His more-than-mastery of the technique from a very young age is part of that. But that isn't the main power he got from the Kyuubi (that would be the improvements to his body). More like a side bonus, like the ability to not die from not sleeping (Gaara, I'm looking at you).

About the calling out of techniques: this is something that shows up in magic, chi, chakra, _and_ youki techniques (youki being demonic power, as a fair number know from fanfics or certain manga (or from the words shoved together in it), but it's explanation comes later, in story).

.Although the details vary with each form of energy, it is almost universally used as a focus to channel energy while taking less concentration from the task at hand (for magic, it often doubles as an invocation of elemental spirits). True, one could train to do so without that… but that would add a long, long time to the training, and in many cases that additional period is unacceptable. It is easier to internalize the focus later, after one has learned the technique.

..Chakra uses the above, but it is also, by its very nature, more difficult to wield than other forms of energy, which is why hand seals are so predominant amongst ninjas to create mental "paths" each sign represents for chakra to flow through. That is why alternate hand seals are mostly passed down through kekkei genkai or for family techniques, because very few other people could create their own "path" for a sign they spent a great deal of time studied. The Sharingan negates the need for "paths" at all (hand seals are just part of the mimicry). True mastery of an element also allows one to partially bypass these paths, although only to an extent.

….The yelling part is similar to the martial art principle of kiai: mysticism aside, shouting while attacking gives you more force (more physically, taking action on the exhale means you aren't holding any breath while exerting yourself (which is bad), and it tightens up the core muscles in your torso. Weightlifters often use the same principle). Techniques that don't benefit of large amounts of the above energies are typically spoken or whispered.

_**Zanganken**_: "Rock Slicing Sword". "Cleaving" would be an appropriate substitute in the middle, if one wanted to. This is one of the special techniques of the Shinmei school, where the user courses chi down the length of their blade to allow it to make a perfect slash through solid stone. Despite this effectiveness against such a tough substance, it doesn't gain more cutting power against other materials.

_**Bunshin no Jutsu**_: "Clone Technique", also called the "Art of the Doppelganger" (my favorite) in at least the earliest official translation of the manga. This jutsu pushes chakra into the air, where it shapes into a copy of the user—but the amount of chakra the technique's design can push out is very small, so the chakra construct has no physical presence and disperses easily. This mindless shell naturally mimics the movement of its creator, but with a little concentration it can move independently. The Bunshin no Jutsu blurs the line between nin- and genjutsu, as despite being visible light passes through it and the bunshin leaves no shadow. This telling trait, and the fact that they don't disturb the surface they walk on, can warn an observant opponent that they are facing the pseudo-illusionary technique instead of the actual foe.

_**Shinmei-ry**__**ū Ukigumo: Sakura Sanka**_: "Shinmei School Floating Cloud: Falling Cherry Blossoms". The user catches the opponents head between their legs and flips backwards to smash their opponent into the ground. At its root it's a frankensteiner, but because those who use it also use chi it can reach levels beyond what the wrestling technique does. Because Setsuna hasn't yet trained up to the level she was at the tournament, she can't pull off three rotations.

You know, people talk about how weird Japan is… but the Japanese have never made a 'reality' tv show about Amish mafia, or… or… just, damn, look at how many reality tv shows we have and some of the horrible, awful, shoot-the-person-who-came-up-with-this-idea-in-the-face that happens on the screen. "Dear America: wtf? Sincerely, Japan."

Sorry, I ended up researching reality tv, and I was utterly horrified that a human being would create a lot of these, and even more disgusted that people would actually enter them. I had to rant at someone.


	14. Flowering Night

**NOTICE**: I promised a number of you that I'd get the ball rolling this chapter. I apologize, but while I have written up to that point, the size of the chapter was insane (again). It was _twice_ the size of my largest chapter to date! So I split the chapter into two and will post the next one on the first of May.

I own nothing here, which is a tragedy I will never recover from. The title is named after a character theme from the Touhou series, composed by ZUN.

Thanks to Ebony Scales and Vandenbz for Beta-reading, especially considering the size of what I sent them.

Female swordsmen are apparently still called swordsmen. And yes, that monkey was in fact killed by a bra.

You know, it always got me that one of the few characters that got flustered almost as much as Negi was the calm, capable…

Last time:_  
>"You're an assassin from the Kansai Magic Association!"<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 14:<strong>

**Flowering Night  
><strong>

"What a fool I was to think otherwise!"

Setsuna's mouth sagged open at Naruto's words. Specifically, at his claims that she was—"What? That's…" she trailed off, too flustered to actually form a response. "That is, I—but you … the Kansai Magic Association hired—"

The young teacher snorted. "Of course they did! Chamo already figured out that the extremist branch hired you, but like naïve schoolchildren we ignored him. A mistake I won't make again!"

'_Oh. Oh, no. No, no, nonono. This is not happening.'_

The tensing of muscle along his shoulder and bicep betrayed his intent, allowing Setsuna to step away before the kunai pressed against her belly could sink into her. As it was, she was left with a small scratch—but that was hardly noticeable to her, especially in this situation.

'This situation' being, her having attacked with lethal force someone who was innocent of the crime she thought him guilty of—something bad enough on its own and certainly guilt-inducing. But when that 'someone' was her teacher, who thought her guilty of what she had thought of him and who was still trying to kill her, it became A Serious Problem, and not the sort that could be resolved through stabbing.

Such issues were best handled via panicking.

"No! _NO!_ Sensei, you're wrong! You-you've got it all wrong, Sensei!"

"A likely story! Stealing the message to the Elder of the Kansai Magic Association, just 'happening' to not drink from the spiked waterfall, this attack…" he snorted as he settled into a partial crouch, empty left hand resting above his right with the blade held forwards. The unused hand was ready to put extra force into a thrust, or slip the kunai into the empty hand to change the angle of attack mid-swing. It was the type of technique only usable in full by those no longer bound by the limits of a normal human. "Even I know better than to trust a saboteur like you!"

As could be expected of someone attempting to handle the situation in a calm manner, Setsuna's arms flailed about with all the grace and control of a terrified, drunken two-year-old trying to drive a freight train-turned-motorcycle through a forest while it was on fire. It looked less like she was trying to wave his accusations away and more like she was trying to slap them out of the air with her hands.

"That's not it! I'm not a that! I'm mean, I'm not that, which I'm not! It's not what you think, Sensei!" There. That was perfectly intelligible, and should quickly resolve the current crisis.

"What?" Naruto froze and stared at her, gears visibly churning in his head even though the concealing steam as he tried to make out what had just tumbled out of her mouth. "No, seriously, what did you just say? What is this I don't even—"

She would be suspended! No, for trying to kill a teacher they'd throw her out of school completely! And Setsuna's duty would be forever unfulfilled, and she would never graduate and everyone would think she was just an unworthy thug who didn't know anything but fighting, and she would never be able to see _her_ again!

And… and… oh. She was still naked. Oh god. It was all Setsuna could do to keep from blubbering as she desperately tried to defend herself.

Had she been a less easily flustered person, or had Naruto been more people-savvy and a better trained shinobi, one of them might have noticed that the young ninja had managed to (quite accidentally) pull off one of the most effective methods of deflecting blame from oneself.

"Really, I'm not! I-I thought you were an enemy, Sensei." Setsuna frantically dug for an explanation that wouldn't paint her as the villain. Fortunately, her nonsensical statement just seconds earlier had given her a moment of reprieve to think as Naruto's brain overheated trying to understand her. However, by some cruel whim of fate the haze over the onzen had chosen to thin at that same moment.

_'Wh-why-why was the steam fading!? Stop! Stop it! That's not helping!'_ Setsuna thought, as though her mental demands would somehow make the water evaporate into concealing steam faster. Plunging her head into the pool would have been more effective, if the heat of the pink flush on her cheeks was anything to go by.

"Th-this entire time I've thought that you were an agent sent from the West, Naruto-sensei. I thought that I saw details and signs that would mean you were from of the Kansai Magic Association, but now…"

Setsuna swallowed and turned her face away from him, compelled by two different types of embarrassment. Although she had focused very carefully on looking only at his face, one couldn't simply stop seeing through peripheral vision. "It seems I have turned my blade upon someone innocent of the crimes I had thought him guilty of." She couldn't ignore the extent to which she had harmed him, even though she hadn't actually struck him with her sword—that would have been but a selfish attempt to excuse herself because she had been disarmed.

Setsuna's torso dropped into a deep, apologetic bow, her head hanging down with the weight of her shame. Conveniently letting her gaze fall entirely on the water below her, and not on the teacher whose eyes stared in every direction but hers.

"I am so sorry Naruto-sensei!" The regret dripping from her voice was tangible. Had they not been in water reaching up to the waist, she would have fallen to her hands and knees for the deeper apology of dogeza. "I attacked first, and continued even when I began to realize it was you, Sensei. Had I thought more, had I been less reckless, I might have realized that you weren't the villain I had assumed you were. I can only swear upon my sword that I'm speaking the truth—I am not a member of the Kansai Magic Association, and I had thought you to be in their employ."

The glare Naruto was directing at the air around her wavered, his eyes falling to the sword clutched nervously in her hand as she rose from her bow. Wherever he had trained and whatever his deceitful tactics, it seemed that he at least knew the regard that one who wields the sword holds for her blade. She felt a small breath of relief at that.

She was also relieved that she could use her other hand to cover her chest, since she was done bowing. The once-protective vapor had thinned out entirely too much. Now able to see him, Setsuna once again felt those alien, contrasting urges to retreat from and to move towards him—except made infinitely more disturbing and awkward by their mutual nudity.

She normally tried to maintain a calm and stoic demeanor, which this entire incident in the baths had made completely impossible. But she couldn't help but grimace. The sensation was just too freakish, and she inched away from the boy.

Her teacher shuffled around uncomfortably. His nervous movements repeatedly pulled him out of and back into the guarded position he had carefully kept throughout her attempt to apologize. Well, as much of a guard as he could make while not looking at the person he was trying to protect himself against, and while trying to cover his groin (despite it being under the water). Naruto's eyes glanced in her direction before jerking back to aimlessly staring at rocks.

"S-still, you are from… I mean, the Kan…" His voice trailed off. Naruto coughed into his hand.

She tried not to look at him.

"…"

Setsuna sank a little deeper into the pool.

"…"

"…"

He found intense interest in a pebble.

"…"

"…"

"…"

"…"

"Ah… er…"

"…"

"…"

"…"

"…"

"…"

"…"

Naruto cleared his throat. "I… well… "

"Yes?"

"Maybe we sh-should, um, get our towels?"

"Ah. Yes. That. We… we should. Should do that."

No girl her age had ever moved faster than Setsuna did in her dash towards the towel she had left lying by the side of the onsen. Water evaporated from the friction of her movement and the heat coming from her face, which seemed to have decided to recolor itself red. The stone underneath her feet melted in her wake to mold itself in the shape of her footprints.

She sighed in grateful relief as she swiftly wrapped her towel around her body. They weren't fighting anymore, and the steam had certainly dropped past the point where it concealed anything. She wasn't made of ice! She couldn't dismiss something as embarrassing as being naked in front of someone if she couldn't be distracted by something as attention-consuming as fighting.

The scrape of metal on stone made her spin around with clenched fists, the readiness for violence not yet having left the waters of the hot spring; but when she saw it was just the now-toweled Naruto fumbling around to try to find one of the weapons that had been tossed into the water during their fight, she felt a twinge of shame. How disgraceful of her, to think he would turn on her when her back was turned, when she was the one that had first started their fight.

Of course, he had continued it, and he hadn't tried to speak with her any more than she had with him—but she had no control over what he felt about his actions. And at the moment, she was hesitant to bring up a negative topic, as they had only recently stopped trying to kill one another.

He did have a good idea, though—Setsuna waded through the water to each of the broken lights, retrieving her bucket and the sheath that Naruto had jabbed into the back of her knee. She didn't want to actually look at her joint, but she really hoped Negi knew at least some basic healing magic. Even moving through the water was painful, and she let herself limp to keep from putting undue pressure on the bruised knee. She knew without looking that it was already black, and a severe enough contusion could be crippling.

The threat of that caused a quiet and bubbling anger to rise up in her chest, but the breathing exercises that had been drilled into her before she had learned even the first movement of her style allowed the emotion to drain past her. They both had attempted to bring as much harm to the other as possible. It was only to be expected in such a fight, but that was over. They were now allies, as they would have been had they approached one another. If Negi couldn't heal her now, she would make do as best she could and find a better medical mage later.

With their bodies barely covered, they wordlessly sat down to continue the conversation, not speaking largely due to the key words, "_barely_ covered". Although her face had returned to a non-life-threatening shade of red, Setsuna certainly wasn't ready to have a conversation with a boy with only the meager covering of a towel! She had never really been willing to make small talk and dialogue with her classmates. As one might imagine, she wasn't exactly an experienced conversationalist. Still, that she had anything to cover herself with was a small blessing.

The blond was the first of the two to speak after an awkward silence. "Well, as I was saying…"

His voice trailed off uncomfortably before continuing, still trying not to look at her. "You say you aren't part of it, but you _are_ from Kyoto. Wouldn't it be strange for a swordsman with such supernatural abilities not to be connected to the local society of magic?"

Naruto had to wait some few seconds for his answer, as Setsuna was busy struggling not to give him a bruise between the eyes to match the one on her knee. He doubted her _still_? Despite having already explained that she wasn't a part of the Association? She had been the first to stop fighting. That should have been enough, she thought.

Still, perhaps it was naïve to think that his distrust would disappear with a simple apology. She could understand that he would hold concerns or suspicions, but to acknowledge neither her attempts to explain her mistakes nor to apologize for them felt like a slap across the face.

But more than that, for him to brush aside the words she had sworn upon her sword to be true—the precious sword that Eishun-sama had gifted her—was an insult that cut deeper than any of Naruto's knives could.

Setsuna bit back her response. She shouldn't reply to that insult if she wanted to end this peacefully. Especially if she were to reply how she wanted to. A deep and calming exhale helped her to regain her self-control.

The fact that they were both submerged in water, and that she did have _some _cover from the towel, may have helped a little bit.

It was with an even voice that she replied, "It's true that I did have some relation to the Kansai Magic Association when I was younger, largely because of my living situation." The small smile that crossed her lips was something that Naruto wouldn't understand. "But I've never joined it. I likewise cannot deny the long history that has bound the Shinmei School with the organization, even before it took its current title of 'Magic Association'. A number of the other swordsmen following the path of Shinmei-ryū were rather… displeased… about my decision to move to the East."

"I admit that I have a purpose to be in this class beyond studying," she continued. "But I wasn't sent by the Kansai Magic Association, and it isn't something I get any money from. It's a personal duty, one of great significance to me."

Setsuna didn't have the words to explain the importance, the significance of the quiet watch she had kept over Class 3-A. Over _her_. She doubted language was sufficient to describe the extent of what she felt about her vigil, to explain the whole of her reasons, to express the history of it beyond the mere retelling of events.

She breathed a sigh of relief when her teacher slowly nodded. "I… don't think that you're lying."

"The boy's right. Especially since you admitted that there was that connection to the Kansai Magic Association. No assassin worth her salt would do something like that!"

Of course, she immediately choked on that sigh and started coughing when Naruto, eyes all but closed and head tilted, felt the need to ask another question. An obvious question to ask, but one that she was nonetheless completely unprepared to answer.

"So… what are you here for? From what Asuna said, you've been a part of this class for a long time. If you aren't spying, then staying here's got to be for something important."

One of her fingers nervously tapped along the hilt of her nodachi. That was a big question. It wasn't that it was secret, precisely, but she hadn't actually spoken of her duty to anyone else before. Even admitting that her reasons for joining 3-A were personal had been uncomfortable. Setsuna felt strangely reluctant to tell of that private devotion, but had she not thought earlier about getting the help of her other teacher? And their fight had shown that Naruto certainly wouldn't be dead weight should an attack come.

It really couldn't hurt, she told herself. She couldn't explain its meaning to her, but she could at least explain to him why she was here. But she could not help but blush and look to the lower right as she spoke of something so personal. "You see, I am Kono—"

"KYAAAAAAAAAA!"

The cry seemed to pierce the very air in the aftermath of their near-voiceless battle. It was a sound such as to instinctively incite alarm, and the other two in the bath jumped to their feet, even before their conscious mind recognized a potential danger.

But Setsuna knew that voice better than her own, and at her scream she had leapt into motion without the slightest pause. Injured leg be damned. Pain wasn't that important compared to—

"Ojō-sama!"

* * *

><p>The panicked scream snapped Naruto out of the strange peace that had settled over the onsen. That was Konoka's voice!<p>

Water splashed into his face as Setsuna immediately dashed to their right, leaping out of the pool as she rushed towards the girls' dressing room. He hadn't the time to do more than recognize the voice before Setsuna had already burst into motion.

He darted after her with kunai in hand, his own words strangled by Setsuna's shout. '_Ojō-sama?_' The words immediately set his curiosity aflame, and ridiculous ideas spewed forth. Seeing as his most reasonable thought was that Konoka was secretly a half-blooded henge youkai member of Japan's royal family disguised as a normal girl to experience life as a commoner, this was actually quite frightening.

Could it be that his imagination was a dangerous thing?

He only barely managed to bring the insane thoughts bouncing around his skull under control, certain that whatever it was had to have been the fault of the enemy they had just been speaking of.

"Setsuna, this is—"

"Yes. It's them. But only their shikigami," was the curt reply he received in the short time it took for them to reach the door. Her voice was tense with an urgency that seemed to override every other thought.

Despite starting later Naruto reached the door at nearly the same time as Setsuna, and so had an equal eyeful of the chaos that had erupted inside the dressing room. Even her intense focus was shattered upon the sight, leaving the two standing uselessly in front of the door as they struggled to come to grips with what lay before them.

Monkeys.

Monkeys everywhere.

Like fuzzy children given sugar injections they leapt about the room, their hooting monkey screams making a high-pitch cacophony that stung his sensitive hearing. They looked more like stuffed animals than real ones, with overly large, perfectly round heads and half-moon ears.

Their mouths stayed open and smiling, not a single monkey's mouth moving a centimeter despite their constant shouting; their bodies were too thin and didn't even reach Naruto's knee, with joints that bent like folded paper and paws that were more like bent clubs at the end of their arms. At least two dozen of them flailed their bodies about as though intending to knock everything in the dressing room to the floor.

"Aaaah! Get your filthy hands off me, you damn dirty monkeys!"

What really stunned the pair, however, were the two girls at the center of the simian hurricane. Asuna and Konoka screamed as they tried to avoid the endless stream of monkeys launching themselves at them. The clothes scattered on the ground and the furry critters clinging to their hair and arms showed how useless that had been.

"W-waahah?! S-set-chan? Naruto-kun? I don't want you to see—no, don't look!" wailed Konoka as a septet of simians jumped her. The panties that had already fallen halfway down her legs were slipped off entirely when they pulled her legs out from under her, and the strap of the mostly-removed bra snapped off.

Konoka fell onto her back with a pained whine, but quickly rolled over to squeeze her thighs together and try to cover her body with her arms. Her blush was an ever brighter shade of red than his, and could very clearly be seen reaching down past her neck. "Don't loooooook!"

Naruto tried not to, but they had to stop the monkeys… _'Sorry, Konoka! I didn't mean to!'_

There wasn't any doubt that they were shikigami—the whiplash of the snapping bra caught a monkey in the face, the plastic hook piercing the note of paper that it became. As if their unnatural appearance hadn't been enough of a hint.

"Accursed monkeys…" came a low voice from his side. Setsuna growled and stepped forwards with dark intent. "How dare you…"

Her eyes pierced the shikigami as though her glare was the very blade of death, accompanied by a sense of fury far greater than anything he had felt in their earlier fight. "What do you think you're doing to Konoka-ojōsama!? I'll slice you up! I wouldn't forgive you even if heaven did!"

"Sakurazaki-san, you aren't seriously going to kill the mon—holy shit, is that a real sword?!" Asuna somehow managed to gasp out while waging tug of war over her last remaining undergarment.

Naruto conveniently ignored her as he agreed with Setsuna. His thrown kunai cut through two of the paper familiars before sinking into the wood flooring, while he himself charged in while ducking low to better swipe at the tiny monkeys.

Setsuna had much the same idea, with unfortunately the same timing.

With the resounding slap of flesh on flesh on monkey on wood they crashed into each other and tumbled head-over-heels onto the floor, now sporting a flattened shikigami talisman. The abuse on Setsuna's poor leg evoked a quick, cut-off cry. Naruto moaned and clutched at his head, wondering about the weight on his torso—

Oh.

Naruto's pupils dilated to the point of nonexistence in complete surprise, in utter shock, in total and absolute speechlessness. Setsuna rubbed her forehead, hearing strange squeaking or gasping sounds below her. She didn't feel like she was sitting on the wood flooring. She looked down.

Her butt sat on Naruto's chest, her legs splayed open so as to keep her from falling forwards. She had landed facing towards him. Both their towels had fallen off during their tumble to the ground. Naruto had apparently stopped breathing.

Naruto couldn't have blinked if he tried. He couldn't have exhaled or spoken either, nor could he have thought. There was a vague awareness that some manner of sound had left his mouth, but mostly he couldn't think past, '_I'm looking at—'_, as his mind started looping at that point, unable to acknowledge the sight but a score of centimeters from his face.

"Gwaaah!" screamed out Setsuna as she scrambled off and away from him. "Wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-_what are you doing_? L-listen, you, I-I-I said I wasn't an enemy, didn't I?" Everything above her belly was a deep scarlet, as she blushed with a ferocious intensity that probably wasn't healthy.

"I-it was an accident! I-I-I didn't see anything!"

"That's a lie, you definitely saw everything!"

"Can you two shut up for a moment? The monkeys are kidnapping Konoka!"

"_EEEEEEYAAAAH!_" Konoka helpfully contributed as she thrashed about, although the movement didn't slow the monkeys at all.

Asuna's words brought an immediate end to their embarrassment and mortifying argument. Like large furry ants, ten monkeys had picked her up and were running out the door with her, the rest of the monkeys following them out as a rambling and messy entourage. The magical constructs ran with ease over the surface of the water in their hurry to the fence.

"I'll never let you take her!" Again Setsuna moved before he could even react as she lunged after them with nodachi in hand. "Shinmei-ryū Secret Technique:"

"_Hyakuretsu Ōkazan!_"

Setsuna's blade flashed in the night, and like a storm of sakura petals she unleashed her chi.

Such was the force of her swing that all the water around her burst outwards as though caught in an explosion, leaving her standing on stone. In the wake of her blade, like a deadly flower blooming in the night, glowed a countless number of slivers of chi that gleamed a pink-white as countless petals danced through the air.

The monkeys carrying her were slashed in half by the swing itself. More were crushed by the waves of water blasted away from the technique. But the vast majority were sliced into ribbons by the cyclone of razors.

Dozens of them, destroyed in a single attack.

How had he survived fighting this person?

Konoka didn't fall when the shikigami disappeared. She wasn't even jostled. In one of the swiftest movements Naruto had ever seen, Setsuna had appeared beside her classmate, legs spread in a bracing stance to lower her to Konoka's level. Grasping hold of her as gently as though she were made of spun glass, she held Konoka close to her body even as she carried through that vengeful attack.

The most Konoka would have felt from the technique was the gust that set her hair a-rippling. Naruto doubted she noticed. From the moment that Setsuna had embraced her, her eyes had never left the swordsman's face.

"Set-chan," she breathed. Her voice was so quiet that even he could barely make it out over the sound of the water rushing back into the gap, but he wasn't the one meant to hear her. "You saved me. I don't get it, but… you saved me, Set-chan."

He could only see half of Konoka's face, but even his heart lifted as the sight of that pure, happy smile. "Thank you."

Setsuna's response was completely different from what Naruto had expected.

Panic swept over her face as visibly as her blush did. She loose an "eep" as she very obviously and very belatedly realized that the one she held was as naked as she. She let go of Konoka, who splashed loudly as she fell onto the water. Setsuna backed away like the girl was a bomb rather than a classmate. "Ah… K-Ko—I mean, I—er…"

Her hair snapped against her face as she frantically looked around for an exit. "I'm so sorry, I have to go!"

"She just jumped onto the roof, didn't she?"

"That's what it looks like."

"Set-chan, wait!" Konoka called out to the retreating Setsuna, her hand outstretched as though she could still catch the swordsman's arm.

Naruto shifted and averted his gaze. Nudity aside… it felt like by just watching he had intruded onto a scene he had no place in. Beside him, Asuna coughed uncomfortably and pulled at her collar. Or tried to, which suddenly reminded her that she wasn't wearing clothes either.

Which, in turn, forced the same realization upon him. In a rush, the feelings of insecurity and embarrassment that had been suspended by conflict fell back onto him.

"Kyaaa!" "Waaaaah!"

They hurled themselves to opposite sides of the room, curling up as best they could behind whatever they could use as cover (Asuna was lucky, and had a flipped over a bench. All he found within reach was a bucket). Their towels were closer to where they started than to where they hid, in a sadistic twist of fate.

He hunched over as much as he could to hide as much of his body as possible behind that bucket, trying to use his hands as some meager cover for the rest. He could all but feel her eyes looking at him, and without any clothes or the force of urgency to protect him it felt as though they could see right through his skin into what he didn't want anyone to see. Into what he didn't want himself to see, for that matter.

The part of her left unhidden glowered at him. "Get out! You can't be in the girls' dressing room, Naruto, so leave! Shoo!" Her arms wrapped tighter around herself as her eyes narrowed. "Hey, you watched them, didn't you? A teacher shouldn't be so perverted!"

"Stop _looking_ at me!" he begged, only barely holding back from screaming the words. "I can't leave if you can see me! And I only came here to help because of the shouting, not to peek—those were the enemy's shikigami, you know! And you were staring at Setsuna and Konoka too, so doesn't that mean _you're_ the pervert?"

"Meh, I can't say anything about that, Ane-san, but the kid wasn't trying to look at any of the good bits. Really, finding a protégé shouldn't be this hard…"

"I'm a girl so it doesn't count! And if the monkeys hadn't attacked first I could have beaten them down myself." Asuna finished, huffing and turning her head to the side. The indignant position she took crossed her arms under her breasts, which only served to make them more prominent on her chest. Let it be noted that this is the exact opposite of hiding them.

"You were trying to get Setsuna to not kill the monkeys! You didn't realize they were fake at all, even though they looked like toys little kids sleep with! Are you st-st-stu—_urk_."

Naruto choked and his eyes bulged at the sight presented to him, before safely slamming his forehead into the floor where he couldn't see anything.

"Oh, that's right," a gentle, but slightly alarmed, voice said. "Naruto-kun helped, too. Thank you for working with Set-chan for… whatever you two were doing."

He slowly craned his neck upwards to see Konoka hiding behind the door, her head poking in through the opening. Her face blushed as red as theirs as she looked between the two naked fools.

"But… if you don't mind… could you please—"

The door into the changing room slammed open.

"What's the trouble here? Don't worry, I can… uh… oh."

Negi slid to a halt at the sight of the naked, hiding three already in the room. His own cheeks flushed, as embarrassment (much like a flesh-eating disease) was only worse the more people who were caught up in it and was more than willing to spread to more victims.

The ever-polite Negi (well, the Negi that tried to be so) scrunched his eyes closed and covered his face with his hands. "I-I-I didn't want, um, that is, well… to interrupt, is what I mean, what I didn't intend to do."

If only everyone else would close their eyes! But if the cost was babbling like Negi, it might not be worth it.

"… but Naruto-kun is a teacher, and, well, uh… well, shouldn't be involved like that? Aren't you, um—that is, fairly grown, so I probably need to leave—*_kyawaaah!*_"

The head of a brush smacked Negi between the eyes, ending whatever nonsense he was going on about. The extended arm and empty hand of Asuna jabbed at Negi. Naruto silently thanked her.

"Negiii," she demanded/whined, mixing the two tones together into something soaked in desperation, "whatever weird things you're imagining, you're wrong! Can't you see this is a crisis?! Towels! Clothes! Getting boys out of the girls' dressing room!"

Negi straightened as he pounded his fist onto his flat palm in understanding. "Oh! Right! So you aren't—oh, good, I thought that you were… this is certainly much easier to deal with."

And that was how the other three ended up in the onsen together, wearing towels to keep their modesty. Naruto also had a towel, but he had overturned a sunbathing bed-chair-thing to hide behind, and steadfastly refused to leave until there was no one else in sight.

The story of how they got to their current positions, and why Naruto hadn't simply run into the dressing room for his own gender, was long and detailed. It was an epic filled with drama and bloodshed, tension and horror, as well as the violent abuse of innocent waterfowl.

So eventful was it that nobody noticed the single monkey shikigami that had survived the earlier massacre change hiding spots.

Actually, Naruto just hadn't been able to make it all the way to the male's changing room before the others came out to soak in the pool. It was a testament to how carefully the onsen was cared for and to the evenness of Setsuna's sword arm that the water hadn't been dirtied in their earlier scrap.

"Set-chan did that?" Konoka said with a quiet gasp. "Oh, I-I'm so sorry, Naruto-kun. When we were little, she was always very quick to notice if something seemed scary, but I didn't know it had become like this…"

Her smooth shoulders slumped and her head sagged, and even in that uncomfortable situation Naruto decided that such a depressed image didn't suit Konoka at all.

"No, I was also too eager to fight. As soon as I knew what was happening, I intended to keep going, rather than try to stop it before it got out of hand." Naruto shook his head, even though they couldn't see him behind his chair-bed (although he could bend the plastic-bendy-strap-things to peek through). The chair seemed out-of-place in the onsen, but he was thankful for it nonetheless. "Some teacher, huh?"

They had needed an excuse of some kind. Negi's eyes had all but bulged out of his head at the sight of the damage he and Setsuna had done to the rock ornaments of the onsen. He looked too stunned to make something up, so Naruto had used a little bit of the truth.

They couldn't tell her everything, but pieces of the truth made deceptions easier to believe and maintain. What surprised him the most, though, was how she hadn't commented at all on the severed stones. She didn't seem dense, and she had good grades. She had to have noticed them. Maybe she was just very trusting?

His excuses sent an uncomfortable tingle down his spine, though. It wasn't an excuse at all—it was more like a confession. He really had only tried to fight, and even though he thought she was behind the attacks on the rest of the class, there were much better ways to have handled it than going after her like that. Especially considering that she was his student, as well.

'Irresponsible' might be the best word for it.

But the mostly-true story had enough in it that he was able to give Asuna, Negi, and Chamo an overview of what had happened without giving away any conspiracies to Konoka.

Konoka smiled weakly, but gratefully, at his attempt to divert blame from Setsuna. Really, although they had both messed up, he didn't know if blame was something that fit this situation. It was just a mistake made by everyone on every side.

Negi looked between Konoka and Naruto, obviously wanting to move the conversation to something less potentially revealing. Fortunately, Asuna already had that handled (although Naruto doubted that she was thinking about hiding the supernatural when she asked the question).

"Konoka, I have to ask… what happened? What is there between you and Sakurazaki-san? I know you were friends, but you've never told me anything else. And I'm pretty certain I heard her call you 'ojō-sama'"

"That's true, isn't it? After this, it's something I have to explain, don't I? And I should have told you a long time ago, Asuna," Konoka said, her voice lifting again as she absentmindedly rubbed a finger across her lips. "We met when we were both little kids. I still have some pictures from back then, and it still sort of surprises me that we were that small!"

"I told you once before that I lived in a huge estate, right? When I lived in the Kyoto province? In a lot of ways, you could say it was wonderful. It was large enough that I always felt like I was exploring when I was little, and it was very old—it was made back in the Heian period. It's been restored a lot over the course of 900 years, but I'm still amazed that I could grow up in something that ancient."

"It was surrounded by beautiful, natural scenery on every side, nestled between the trees in the mountains, a clear river with plenty of fish less than a half hour's walk away. The only sounds you ever heard were the wind and the birds, rustling branches or surprisingly loud insects or any number of animals. But…" Konoka softly laughed. "Well, none of these can be found around towns or cities."

"Even though it had all these things, it was very isolated, and I was always terribly lonely. Our only visitors were people who came to meet with my father, so I was never able to meet anyone to make friends with."

"Then you met Setsuna." Naruto had no idea if she heard him or not—it seemed he had no breath with which to speak. Why was that?

As Konoka continued, the mystery of her and Setsuna further unraveled. With each additional word, her next became more obvious to him—like she was pushing him ahead of her on a narrow path with only one destination.

He already wanted her to stop. He didn't want to actually hear it.

"You're right, Naruto-kun. That's when Set-chan showed up!" The warmth of the smile she sent his way was as real as the warmth from the onsen. "Some of the masters of the Shinmei school from my father's side of the family had come to meet about… oh, I really don't remember. It wasn't important to me back then."

"I was in the courtyard when they came in. Did you know Set-chan used to be really shy? She was trying to hide behind Motoko**-**nēsama when we were introduced, and it took a while to actually convince her to come and play."

"I don't know why she was brought to my home when the Aoyama had a dojo that taught Shinmei-ryū, but Set-chan stayed with us to study kendo. She was there every day, so it didn't take very long for us to become friends. She was my first, and for a long time only, friend. We played together, were tutored together, made up games together, wandered around to explore the forests by my house together… we did anything, really, as long as we were with each other. We were all but joined at the hip!"

"Set-chan used to be really protective," Konoka murmured, her voice dropping as she wrapped her arms around herself. "She'd try to guard me from all sorts of scary things. There was this really mean dog that would always try to bite people, and she'd chase it away even though it was as tall as we were. Once, she even drove away an angry wild boar. Ahaha, it sounds silly now, but it was frightening back when I was just a kid!"

"But one day… we weren't doing anything dangerous. We'd crossed the river on that fallen-over tree trunk plenty of times before. But that day, when I walked across, it just… broke. Snapped right down the middle."

The words coming from her mouth were thick and weighed down by the emotions Konoka was trying and failing not to voice. "I fell into the water. I didn't know how to swim and couldn't do anything but splash about as the river pulled me down and pulled me away. Set-chan tried to save me, but that just meant I dragged her under the water with me. We were lucky that the adults weren't too far away, because we ended up needing them to save the both of us. "

Her voice hitched. The pain there was one that Naruto had never experienced before, nor imagined, and listening to her story felt like spikes digging into his chest. It hurt. Unlike anything Naruto had ever experienced before, it hurt.

"I didn't understand it. What Set-chan meant when she said she wanted to be stronger. She devoted herself to training in kendo after that—so much so that we barely saw each other, even when we were in the same house. By the time my father sent me to Mahora's elementary school, she had left home entirely to study at the dojo."

She choked over her words. Telling someone was hard, and remembering it was painful. Looking at her, he hated it.

"Th-the first day of junior high was my first time seeing her in years. When I heard she was coming here, I had thought that we could… that we could be friends again. But it's like we don't know each other at all. She won't even talk to me!"

The socially-deprived Naruto wasn't equipped to handle this. He didn't understand it. All he knew was—

Konoka's lips twitched upwards into what was meant to be a smile. "I still don't get it. And I don't know what I did to make it go so wrong."

—That he hated it. Konoka face wasn't meant to bear such a sad expression. The small tears that streaked down her cheeks were so painfully out of place. Each droplet seemed like a hammer smashing into his sternum.

It was wrong, so wrong that his chest hurt and his throat sealed closed and his eyes burned as though filled with ash. Something like _this_… he didn't want to see it anymore.

On Konoka's face… on anyone's face, those tears were something Naruto didn't want to see, ever again. He would do anything for that.

Negi and Asuna moved to console Konoka, and so did not notice Naruto slip away.

* * *

><p>Dressed again in the inn's complementary yukata, Naruto stalked down the halls of the inn in search of Setsuna. Whether it was to punch her in the face or demand an explanation, he wasn't quite sure.<p>

The image of those tears trailing down Konoka's face haunted him more than they had any right to. How could Setsuna let this stand? How could she allow her friend to feel that kind of abandonment and pain?

And he thought that _he_ had hurt her? After hearing this… after seeing the emotions pulled forth by Konoka's tale that he couldn't help but feel in return, Naruto could not help but scorn himself. How utterly _arrogant_ of him.

But why? It was obvious that Setsuna was protecting her even now, but Naruto couldn't imagine an acceptable reason to leave her alone for years.

Well, if it were him in Setsuna's place it would certainly make sense to stay away from Konoka. It seemed that she was almost like a real-life princess, and something like him wasn't appropriate company for someone like that. It would be better for her if they weren't friends. But Setsuna was hardly in the same boat that he was. It wouldn't be terrible for the two childhood friends to make up—the class difference wasn't that vast, or that important, in their case.

That's what the movies said, at least.

Naruto didn't see how Setsuna could keep such a distance from someone who cared for her so much. How she could be so cold to the Konoka who made such a face? Just the thought of it drove some sensation he could only barely grasp, like a strangled cry or choked gasp, into his throat.

His head thudded against the wall as he leaned his forehead into it. His body was trembling. He didn't understand why that was.

Perhaps it wasn't a surprise that the blond was so lost. Even as short as his stay at Mahora had been, it still brought him more human interaction than he had experienced in the rest of his life combined. True, Naruto had experienced the death of someone close to him, the sense of loss from abandoning the home and people he knew, and even the lingering fear that he had been betrayed by someone he trusted (always returning regardless of his attempts to stifle it).

But the limited experiences of one who had spent most of his life avoiding others hardly touched upon the breadth of emotion a human could feel. To someone for whom the word 'friend' is a novel, uncomfortable, and unfamiliar yet wonderful thing, Konoka's rejection by a dear childhood companion was a nightmare he could only barely begin to fathom.

Yet such was the nature of human empathy that he could not help but to reflect her sadness, unequipped with the healthier responses a more socialized and less demon-infested person would have at hand.

And so Naruto stood for nine long minutes, futilely demanding that his legs, his hands, his lip, stop trembling.

He couldn't d—Naruto swallowed. He had to talk to Setsuna.

Again he went looking for her, but he couldn't find so much as a hair of her. That wasn't to say his search was a waste of time, however. When he walked down the second floor after a brief search of the top (in which he completely avoided his own door and the horrors within) he found himself grabbed by the wrist and hauled into a room.

A brief panic surged through him, and as soon as he touched the floor he sprang to the other side of the room. He used the force of the movement to tear himself out of the hand that caught him, the fiendish grasp that... just let him go?

Oh.

Naruto was forced to contort his body into an unnatural position so as not to land on Makie or Akira's face. The realization that this was Group 4's room brought with it the responsibility of not squashing his students' noses under his feet.

He righted himself, cradling his arm to his chest as though the hand that had grabbed him had been wrapped in barbed wire. Frankly, Naruto would have preferred the cuts instead of the student standing in front of him. It was hard to drag his eyes from her hand to her face.

Yes, he would definitely need to ensure that there was mandatory bathing tomorrow morning. The skin of his arm crawled with the hideous infection he carried, and Naruto couldn't control the shiver that ran through him from the area she had made the mistake of touching. Like everyone else here, though, she seemed not to notice the scum on her hand.

Kaede's eyes were fully open, and nothing in her expression resembled the laid-back girl she usually was. Her focused and solemn expression changed her face entirely. She stared at the arm he held close to himself, before raising her own gaze to meet his.

"Naruto-bōzu," was her simple greeting. "You've come at a good time."

He walked with silent steps between the girls sleeping on their futons—it seemed Akira had already turned in for the night, and everyone else was drunker than something that is often considered to be very drunk. "I wouldn't say I came here when you dragged me into the room…"

"Ahaha, that would be true, wouldn't it? You walked by at a good time, at least. I've wanted to find either you or Negi-bōzu, but leaving her alone is hardly an option." The words were quiet, so as not to disturb the others in the room. Naruto's ears could hear her easily, of course.

"Leave her…?" Naruto frowned. Kaede soberly gestured at the futon beside her. He had noticed it, but didn't think anything of it other than to note that it was occupied.

It was Mana's, and there was something terribly, terribly wrong with her. Her darker skin had paled to an unhealthy-looking shade that Naruto didn't think skin was supposed to take. But more than that, her eyelids didn't stop fluttering and squinting even in her sleep, completely out of synch with one another, and the glimpses he saw of her eyes were not reassuring. What should have been white was yellow-orange, and the veins in her eyes were so inflamed it made the corners of them look entirely red—so much so that for a brief, but horrifying, moment he'd thought something in her eyeballs had ruptured.

"What—what the hell? Isn't this the sort of situation hospitals were made for? Why isn't she seeing a medical-ni—er, a doctor, already?" Naruto demanded to know.

"That would normally be the case, yes, but—ah, please pardon me. She's already started sweating again," Kaede said, kneeling beside Mana. She took a small washcloth from a bucket at her side—snitched from the baths below, from the look of it—and gently brushed the wet fabric over Mana's face and shoulders, all that was exposed of her at the moment.

"I apologize for the interruption," the ninja girl said once she started on her task. "She's been sweating at a dangerous rate. I've been forcing her to drink, but it's still worrying."

She wrung out the towel in what looked like a flower vase minus the flowers, before wetting it again to return to caring for Mana. "You would be right, Naruto-bōzu, but Mana has been… let's call it 'in the field', since she was rather younger than you, and long experience doesn't leave the body untouched."

_That_, Naruto could certainly understand. Having someone find out what he held inside in such a way was the type of thing nightmares sprung from, but a doctor's exam would just as easily expose those who were involved with the supernatural, wouldn't it?

"Of course. And normal people can't find out about that, right?" Kaede nodded, although he didn't need an answer. "But… this…" Naruto struggled to find the words that would describe how small Kaede's care was compared to how terribly ill Mana looked.

Another nod. "Just this hardly seems enough, does it not? Still, no normal hospital would be able to help her, even if we took her there. And our cute little mage-sensei doesn't seem to focus in healing magic, and I do believe that drawing the poison out and repairing its damage is beyond his abilities in that area. Aside fro—"

"Poison? Are you sure?" Naruto interrupted. Worry splashed openly across his face, even more so than it had before Kaede's disturbing revelation.

The tall kunoichi finished her task and set the cloth over the edge of the bucket. "Quite sure. I've had my share of exciting and not-so-exciting undertakings, and have learned a number of skills most curriculums don't offer students. The cause, in this case, was almost certainly the drugged water from the temple."

"But no one else is like this!" Shivers ran up and down Mana's frame despite her blankets, and her hair was plastered to her head and shoulders from accumulated sweat. 'Like this' was a miserable sight. One that harshly reminded Naruto of something he didn't really want to be reminded of.

"That's true. If I may suggest, I believe there may have been another substance slipped in with whatever it was that set everyone else to their slumber."

Naruto frowned and knelt down on the opposite side of the unconscious girl. "But why target only Mana? Did they know that she was strong and tried to take her out early?"

Kaede tilted her head from side to side. "That may be true, but I think it is more a case of… well, Naruto-bōzu, I mentioned that Mana would not want to be taken to a normal hospital, yes?" At his acknowledgement she continued. "Suffice to say that everyone has secrets, and this one of Mana's is such that any number of people might set up protections that would affect her and not another person, without intending to target her as an individual."

What the _hell_ did that mean? All Kaede's explanation succeeded in doing was making Naruto confused, which admittedly wasn't all that hard to do. "That doesn't say anything! All you said was that you can't speak about it!"

"Hm, did I? I thought I said quite a bit." She gave him a languid smile. "Well, when you figure it out you'll become a little more cunning than you are now, so think of it as training your mind. But as for Mana… I don't recognize the poison, but it began to take effect during the ride over here."

"It was subtle at first, but when I went to look in on her after the last of our drunken classmates had been put to bed I found her much like this. Overall she has most of the common symptoms of a fever, but despite sweating so much her temperature is actually below normal. And you can see for yourself what it's doing to her skin. Her eyes have likewise suffered."

She sighed. "All I've been able to find out about it is that it is almost certainly a chi-based curse toxin, which would explain why the symptoms don't match any of the mundane poisons I know of, as well as how it could only affect certain types of people. Those tend to be very difficult to cure—one has to deal with the physical poison and the curse attached to it at the same time, or the other will immediately renew the one you just removed." She completed her tasks of the moment, and set the small towel aside.

Kaede's eyes bored into him as Naruto stared in quiet horror at Mana. "If it's something you can speak about, I'd like to know more about why these attacks have targeted our class."

"That… that's actually something I've been meaning to tell you. You see, the Kansai and Kanto…"

Naruto didn't turn to meet her eyes. He could feel the force of her stare against his face, but he couldn't tear his gaze away from Mana as he explained the events leading up to his exit from the onsen. There was a strange, dizzy feeling of disconnect from his body, of distance that let him observe himself and his surroundings more clearly.

Yes, it really did look similar to that time, when he had stood by the bedside of another person bound to their bed by poison.

But the Hokage had been old and his body had already begun to fail him. Mana wouldn't die. She _would not_.

"This is certainly a problem," Kaede understated once Naruto finished bringing her up to date . He heard her at her chin in thought. "One which rules out trying to get help from the Association… there's no way to know the loyalties of whoever we contacted. I'm afraid I won't be of any help in regards to preventing the Kansai extremists from approaching or entering. I don't think leaving Mana alone for any significant length of time is a good idea. But should they manage to get inside, I'll certainly be at hand to assist."

He turned towards her so as to catch her in the corner of his eye. "Yes, a kunoichi would certainly be helpful if the enemy managed to slip past us."

She laughed. "Ahaha, I have a policy of denying that… but I suppose professional courtesy makes that a little silly in this case." Her head tilts to the side as her eyelids dropped until they were all but closed. "I did expect that to come up a little sooner, though."

"I've never heard of anyone using that 'chakra' of yours in place of chi, but then again I never thought I'd meet someone who had never heard about a rifle, either. I'd known about some smaller clans of ninja that hid themselves away in the most remote areas to preserve their secrets… but that's some pretty extreme isolation, no?"

Naruto hid his sigh of relief. He hadn't _actually_ told Kaede and Mana that he was from another world, but after his first chat with them he had certainly worried they might have figured that out from his copious half-truths. No one had ever accused him of being a suave conversationalist. This sounded like a good reason for him to not know all the things he was ignorant about. (Actually, it was a terrible and improbable excuse, which he would later find out to his embarrassment when he tried to use it).

Or maybe Kaede was just being nice and giving him a way to avoid a more-than-uncomfortable explanation…

Regardless, he took the opportunity she handed out. "Yeah, I never really had the opportunity to see or learn about the rest of the world." He replied. It was, after all, entirely true—he'd only been on Earth for a short while, and he didn't last in the Academy long enough for the detailed geography lessons.

The entire world wasn't really that important, though. One of his friends (would the word ever stop sending that warm tingle down his spine?) laid sick before him, and another sat, worried, at her side. His students were sleeping in the room, unaware of the potential dangers the night might bring.

His own, personal world had already been stretched to something larger than it had ever been, and it still wasn't spinning the way it should. He didn't have anything to spare for people or sights on the other side of the globe.

Naruto rubbed at the back of his head. "I guess it was just wishful thinking that the two of you might not have known what that training was for, wasn't it?"

"The throwing of shuriken and the running up of vertical surfaces _do_ tend to be pretty strong tip-offs that one might be a ninja, yes."

He wasn't certain how Kaede could look reproachful when he couldn't see her eyes. "Naruto-bōzu, that much should have been obvious. It's only common sense that we would know that much after our first meeting—you didn't try to hide your equipment at all."

His eyes darted to the floor with his shamed nod. Yes, it was pretty stupid of him. He could blame his awful work at keeping it secret on his head injury (which he actually couldn't, as the demon had certainly fixed any possible brain damage before he woke up), but thinking they hadn't noticed or understood what it meant was just shameful. Like Kaede said, an absolute failure of common sense.

Although, if it involved common sense, that might have been why he screwed up in the first place…

Naruto's other, more personal objective hadn't been forgotten in more urgent matters. Although it embarrassed him to ask—especially after admitting to such a mistake—he pulled his gaze away from the ground to look at the older ninja again.

"You're right. It was foolish," he admitted, his face hot, "but I haven't had much opportunity to learn. I never actually completed my training, and my village is… well, it's easiest to say that there isn't anything to go back to anymore."

Kaede's eyes widened slightly. "I had thought that the—no, never mind. It's not important. Is there no one else from your own clan that you can turn to? Even if hidden away, they should have some operatives outside, even if only to ensure that food and supplies come in on a steady basis."

"No, there isn't anyone like that. I don't actually know a single person in the world who doesn't live in Mahora."

Naruto didn't understand the disturbed look on Kaede's face when he said that. "I… see. I had dismissed them as rumors, but… Naruto, did you really lose your home to some accident or disaster?"

What? Naruto just stared at her until it occurred to him that it was actually a reasonable interpretation of what he had said. It wasn't right, but it wasn't too off track, either. "I heard that one—about a fire or mudslide or something along those lines, right? I don't know where the rumor started, but it's true that I don't have a home anymore. It wasn't destroyed, though. There's just no one there."

His last words came out in an odd, almost lost tone he hadn't intended to make, and certainly didn't like to hear from his own mouth. A sense of vertigo came over him, and if he hadn't already been on the floor he might have fallen over. Was he trying to convince her to help him, or was he admitting to how well and fully he had been separated from Konoha?

The kunoichi noticed his brief uneasiness, of course, but credited it to something else. The older ninja looked profoundly uncomfortable. "I am… sorry to hear that. I imagine it would be difficult to have lost such a bond. I doubt I would have reached chūnin without the wisdom of my grandfather and the techniques our family had developed as part of the Kōga clan."

Yes, Naruto was quite certain she was thinking of something very different from what he was trying to say. That didn't mean she hadn't spoken the truth, though, even if it did make his eyes itch from the urgent need to turn his gaze away from her. After all, he actually didn't have a family to learn or take advice from.

He was rather certain that she was understating how much of her own skill came into play in earning her rank, though.

"You're right about that, which is something I had hoped to speak with you about," Naruto said in a nervous tone. It felt almost shameful to ask for. "I know that I'm only half-trained. There isn't anyone who can teach me the use of chakra, so I'm left to my own devices to learn that. But… there's a lot more to being a shinobi than awesome superpowers."

He swallowed. "Please… could you teach me that?"

It shouldn't feel so embarrassing just to ask for training. But he wasn't of her clan in the first place, and her words earlier had unwittingly provoked an uneasy shame of his lack of family. Family which she had just stated to be the origin of her talents. Even aside from that, he couldn't help but dread what his friend might think when she found out how little he actually knew.

Kaede stared at him silently for a long time, not looking surprised in the least. An almost resigned sigh escaped from her lips as she dropped her head. "Naruto-bōzu, I'm already training two green kunoichi of the Kōga. And I certainly can't show you the use of the secret techniques of the Kōga clan or Nagase family…"

Naruto flinched from her refusal as though she had slapped him. It was a reasonable answer. One he had expected more than her agreeing, actually. His request _was_ rather selfish, regardless of how excited he was over it—he didn't have anything to offer her in return, and spending more time around him wasn't a good idea.

He knew that, but he didn't get why that knowledge didn't soothe the feeling of rejection at all.

But then Kaede's head rose with a small smile. "… Still, in what time I can spare I'd be glad to help, inasmuch as I can."

It felt, for one brief second, as though time had stopped. He was stunned. Beyond stunned. The shock on his face was impossible to hide, and Kaede shook her head in obvious disappointment. "Naruto-bōzu, I'm surprised. Surely you don't think me such a failure of a friend that I would abandon you when you ask for help? Especially when it is so obviously important to you."

"N-no, that wasn't… what I…" Naruto tried to explain as he fell over his own words. That wasn't it at all. Of course he didn't think that. _He_ thought doing such a thing was terrible, and even setting that aside there was no way that someone like Kaede would ignore a friend in need.

It was just that… this was different. She might have. He wasn't a very important friend to her, after all.

Hot flushes of shame came over him in far greater intensity than it had before. Just asking? What embarrassment was there to be found there, compared to the insult he had laid at Kaede's feet?

"Ah, there's no need to look so serious about this, Naruto-bōzu. There are many other matters of grave importance tonight, but being embarrassed about a question molded by nervousness is not one of them," Kaede said in that light manner of hers, waving her hand as though to wash away his anxiety as unwarranted.

But the blond still wouldn't look the ponytailed ninja in the eyes, and so missed the keen gaze scrutinizing him. "I was just teasing you a bit, so don't worry about not getting your intent through to me. I knew what it was you meant to say when I answered your question. There are some responsibilities that I'll have to take care of before I can free up some time, but I should be able to meet with you for training at least a couple of times each week."

"That's great! I-I mean, I'm usually free not long after school's out, so it wouldn't be hard for me to match your schedule."

"Mmm, is that so? Then I suppose you haven't found a club to advise yet… although I suppose that should be obvious, as the rumor mill hasn't exploded over it," she mused aloud. "With the meeting times half-completed, I should give mention of the contents—I won't teach you martial arts."

"Eh?" Naruto tilted his head in question. "That doesn't seem like something that should be skipped over. It's sort of important." Of course, back home he would have been offended if someone said he should learn martial arts instead of taijutsu… but apparently the words didn't have quite the same meaning over here. Maybe his translating ability couldn't properly carry over something that only has meaning in one language?

Kaede nodded with an impassive face. "Just a little bit, yes. Unfortunately, the only styles I know well enough to train someone in are to be kept solely within the Kōga clan. Ahahaha… not that I'm actually teaching them to anyone. My students learn and practice their family style, which is also a secret… they do it quite badly, mind you, since none of their older family members live close enough for them to train with on anything resembling a regular basis, but they refuse to learn another of the martial arts available to those of the clan. It's rather frustrating, really."

She sounded very calm, but Naruto felt like Kaede her students would be the subject of much complaint if she actually had people she could complain to about them.

Naruto felt a sense of relief that was entirely out of place, considering that she just said she couldn't help him. But it meant that he hadn't been entirely wrong, that the sewer that was his mind hadn't automatically assumed the worst of his friend. He had just been… realistic. That was all.

"It's fine then, in that case. As long as I can find people I can fight, then I'll keep getting better at hand-to-hand. I think I can cover that part by myself."

"No." Kaede broke in curtly. "Naruto-bōzu, such an approach would be a mistake. When one attempts to teach themselves to fight in such a manner, there are almost always flaws in their technique that a more skilled opponent could exploit. When your growth is dependent upon the opponents you face, you only develop in the direction needed to defeat them—this can often leave you vulnerable to someone who fights in a way you've never encountered."

"One of the benefits of knowing a martial art, particularly one of the older ones, is that it provides defenses and counters against a great many different methods of attack. The martial arts we have today are the result of hundreds of years of wisdom, training, and experience in battle—each style is improved and expanded as each generation passes its skills on to the next."

Naruto bit the inside of his lip to keep from arguing back on basic principle of being told he was wrong. It did make sense, although he thought he hadn't done too badly against Setsuna… but then again, maybe he wouldn't have been flung around the pool if he knew how to defend himself against those throws of hers. "Then what should I do? If you won't help me—"

Kaede sighed as she interrupted him. "I apologize for this discourtesy, but Naruto-bōzu… that's not what I said. I said I wouldn't _teach_ you, not that I wouldn't _help_ you. I know there are more than a dozen martial artists back in Academy City that could instruct on the level of skill someone like you would need to grow stronger. When we get back I can introduce you to some of them, or at least point you in their direction."

An uncomfortable distorted feeling rose in his stomach. He made a mistake again, and the same one at that. His lips twitched. "I… I'm sorry. Thank you for this. Having the opportunity to learn the ninja arts means more than you know."

"Does it?" she asked softly, her eyes seeming to see more than just clothing and flesh and she stared at him. Kaede might have said more, but a scratchy moan fell from Mana's lips and took her attention.

His too, for that matter. Their minds had strayed from her during their conversation, and Naruto knew now that Kaede had been right not to leave Mana for even the short time it would have taken her to find him or Negi. Just over the course of their short talk she had gotten worse, and fingers of guilt crept down Naruto's back that he hadn't been focused more on helping her. It truly had been a selfish request.

Sweat poured off her, but her lips were dry enough to crack. A drop of blood from her lips fell into her mouth, and it fell onto something black. Naruto didn't think black was a color meant to be found in mouths. Her already uncomfortable sleep had dropped to the point that she couldn't stay still on the futon.

Kaede swore—the first time he had heard her do so—and demanded that he bring the water to her. It was only then that he noticed that she had (presumably stolen) one of those huge jugs of water that had disposable cups stacked with them.

He hardly noticed its weight as he set it down beside her, and at Kaede's direction quickly refilled the bucket and vase. The already fouled water was dumped out the window.

After fetching her folded case from the wall (filled with plants, powders, a minimum of two poisons amongst other vials of liquids, and tools for at least seven different trades), Naruto could do nothing but watch and wait as Kaede took care of the second of his first friends. It was more than just wiping away sweat, he noticed; she cleaned out Mana's mouth before forcing her to drink, and she had a couple of herbal pastes that she proceeded to re-apply on the squirming sleeper.

He didn't know what more he could do to help. Naruto had never learned more than the most basic emergency first aid, and hadn't used it since the last drill held at the Academy before he ran off. He had certainly never needed to use it.

More than simply not helping, he might be getting in the way, Naruto realized. Mana was a girl after all, and there were some necessary steps in caring for her that Kaede would likely be hesitant to do with him here. Well, considering how sick Mana was Kaede might do so anyways, but that would surely be terribly embarrassing for her, him, and for Mana once she woke up.

It would be best to leave, and he had other matters to attend to anyways. But, as Naruto watched Kaede diligently work on the comatose Mana, uncomfortable thoughts invaded his mind. Hadn't Negi been worried about him? Hadn't Naruto seen how his own reactions could be unpleasant to others? Oh, he hadn't hurt Konoka, he knew that after seeing actual pain on her face, but couldn't he actually do so if he got to know someone better? What if Kaede had been set to sleep as well, and _he_ had been needed to take care of Mana?

He pulled back his shoulder so his hand was in the sleeve of the yukata. It was normal, wasn't it, to pat a friend on the shoulder? To show one's support, if he understood correctly. Naruto had never done it before.

It was a normal, everyday thing. Anyone could do it. All he had to do was reach out…

But…

Naruto's fingers wouldn't reach. His arm halted centimeters away from her, his fingers trembling. Naruto's breathing grew a touch heavier, though to his ears it sounded like the wheezing of a smithy's bellows.

It wasn't bad. He wasn't trying to hurt her. His hand was pulled into his sleeve, and even then he would only touch her through her own clothes. It wasn't that different from when he needed to bring the class into the ryokan to get them safely put to bed. He would just touch her shoulder, for one second.

He could do that. It would show that he just had problems being surprised, that's all. He was a ninja. It shouldn't be a big shock or anything.

That… issue, with other people. It wasn't all that bad, was it? If it didn't sully them, he could touch them if he tried. Really, something small like that could be fixed easily. If it even needed to!

All he had to do was stretch his arm out a little farther.

The limb didn't listen. It was no more successful than trying to push his fingers through a slab of steel, and his furiously clenched muscles and the trembling in his hand worsened into harsh, jittering shakes and painful convulsions.

This wasn't supposed to happen. '_Move!_' Hadn't he managed those moments of contact when he needed to bring the girls to their rooms to sleep off the effects of the last trap? '_Move!_' There wasn't a reason to stop. It wouldn't soil her, it wouldn't hurt, and he was definitely fine.

'_Move, damn you!_'

But all his efforts accomplished were to send terrible, sickening waves down his shoulder into his stomach. With hesitant movements, he brought his extended hand up to his face, staring at it as though it were some foreign object.

"Hey, are you alright?"

"No, I—I'm fine," Naruto threw out, thinking of nothing more than getting out of the room. "I… I have to go. Meeting with Negi. Bye."

And so Naruto stumbled out the door to search for a restroom before he vomited over the inn's floors.

There really was something horribly, horribly wrong with him, and he didn't have the slightest idea what to do about it.

But moving that far didn't agree with him at the moment, and he ended up just sagging by a conveniently open window, trying to control his breathing and let the fresh air ease away the twisted knot in his gut. On some level he was glad he hadn't succumbed to nausea as some insignificant act of pride, but he was too occupied trying to wrap his head about his latest and possibly most significant failing to actually feel relieved about it.

And then he noticed the water on the windowsill.

There had been no storms that day, and none of the hall windows had been left open. Naruto's suspiciousness flared to life, previous thoughts eagerly forgotten as he turned his entire mind onto anything else other than what he had just been doing. His hand had already wrapped around the kunai hidden in his yukata when he laughed.

His nose might not match up to an Inuzuka's, but his sense of smell was certainly enough to recognize Setsuna's scent after being thrown around the onsen by her so many times. A quick glance at the nearest rooms showed Group 5's not far away from where he stood.

Admittedly, she did jump onto the roof. Completely naked. It would be sort of difficult to get into the building normally.

Had Asuna locked their room's window? He couldn't think of another reason for Setsuna not to go in through that more private door… until he leaned out of the window. Ah. That side of the building pointed towards the city.

But that was a little paranoid, even for h—or not, he remembered as he saw some bushes that had been pushed apart just wide enough for a boy to slip through them and complete another part of the magic-ward-barrier-thing. They actually _were_ under surveillance, and the top of a roof gave a much clearer view of the ryokan than the forest did.

She was good at this.

Naruto pushed himself away from the window and strode over to Group 5's room. Putting his ear to the door, he slowly slid it partway open with a deliberate scraping noise.

No response. Setsuna certainly hadn't gone to sleep, and would have reacted as soon as someone seemed to be entering the room. Which meant she was already gone, and he had to go find her.

So he—again—went searching through the hotel. It was getting very tiresome, but he supposed having a good grasp of the building's layout could only be a good thing. Hopefully he could talk to her alone before Negi and Asuna (and Chamo) showed up. He had some questions for her, and it would be nice to ask them now that he wasn't healing from dislocations and more bruises than a shoe would suffer if it were a living being.

He savored the resurfaced memory of adrenaline and all-consuming urgency. He'd never felt anything so intense before! He had thought she had given up a big advantage after killing the lights, but she had managed to more than just keep up. And she had _cut through a giant rock_! True, it wasn't much bigger than he was, but that was still large enough to break a sword if someone was stupid enough to swing one at it.

He had a lot of experience with beating down thugs and street toughs, and occasionally one of them was actually trained to fight. But this had been completely different—her form and technique were refined to such an extent that he couldn't get through at all. His (unnaturally) superior physique hadn't mattered. Then she had used more of her 'chi'—he was pretty certain it was that and not magic.

And she threw like a beast. He would need to remember that tactic in the future—using his back to break rock _hurt_. And –wait.

Wait. Wait. Waitwaitwait_waitwaitwait_.

There was something strange about that. Something he hadn't noticed until he replayed their fight in his head.

They'd been in physical contact over and over again during their entire duel. They had struck each other, briefly grappled, delivered throws, and he had both been subject to that insane spinning smash into the water _and_ had been held down by her at the end of the match.

And he did not feel the slightest bit uncomfortable about that.

His arms, his fist, his wrist, his stomach, his throat, his shoulder, his head—all these had come into _actual physical contact_ with her skin. As though it had merely gone into hiding, the blush again bloomed on his face, painting his cheeks red.

That… that wasn't what he meant. That was completely and absolutely not what he meant. '_Brain, why have you betrayed me?_'

But instead of disgust, all he felt was the remembered thrill of actually managing to land a hit. The exhilarating pain of being struck, of breaking through stone, and even dislocating his shoulder; the heady accomplishment of tearing the blade from the swordsman's grip and from seeing the obvious worry on her face when she had tried to directly block his punch.

There had been no room to feel self-loathing: that space was filled to the brim with violence and pain and excitement.

Although... he sighed, disappointed in himself that he had forgotten such a thing, and guilt rushed up to change the blush on his face to another kind altogether. He would need to tell Setsuna. He couldn't tell Setsuna about the danger she was in, but her more so than anyone else he had to convince that she needed to bathe in the onsen.

Fortunately, he interrupted her before she so much as stepped into the water, so she would likely try to take another anyways… The wonderful healing powers of the onsen would surely cleanse any stain he had left.

There were gaping flaws in Naruto's logic, of course. Considering what the boy thought of himself, it would be impossible for a simple hot spring to clean his 'corruption' off another, or for such a pool to endure his touch without being befouled. Yet miraculously the onsen remained pure and purifying, but somehow unable to sanitize Naruto.

Such holes were avoided with the unconscious ease of someone with long practice at both thinking ill of himself and at ignoring reason at his convenience.

Naruto's thoughts drifted back to the bizarre discovery of not-horrifying touch. But he really had no idea why he had been, and was, so unfazed by it. Just thinking of touching someone now—Setsuna included—sent a coil of nausea through his stomach… although his recent attempt may have contributed to that.

That was something that seemed like he would need to think about, and he desperately wanted to occupy his thoughts with anything at all that wasn't his personal failures.

He heard the chiming of hair-bells, and headed towards it.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note<strong>:

Someday I'm going to get around to describing the difference between martial arts and taijutsu. Maybe once we actually get a good look at either one. Also, Naruto/Kaede isn't happening—I just need to point this out because shipping these ninjas together is common and they're going to be pretty close friends. I wrote two paragraphs further explaining this, but these notes are long enough already. Also, originally I only intended to Mana to get sick; the possible memory problems with Makie and Ayaka just sort of wrote themselves into the story.

**Bowing in Japan**: Bowing is an important part of polite behavior over there. A proper bow is executed from the waist with a straight back, with your hands at your sides (males) or clasped in front of you (females). The duration and depth of a bow all vary depending on the formality of the occasion, the emotions involved, the respect the bower has towards the other, and the reason for bowing in the first place. These reasons can range from greetings to apologies to requests to expressions of gratitude, and more besides. One might do little more than incline their head, the most casual "bow", when greeting a friend, and a superior's bow to an inferior (say, boss to employee, for instance) would also stay this short as to not give the wrong implications.

There are wild boars in Japan. Boars are generally peaceful, but once they get mad they can be murderous. Considering the population explosion of feral pigs worldwide, I think that's good to know. It isn't silly for a kid to be scared of one. The Japanese boars been known to wander into cities from time to time. I could not find a comparison between the bacon of the Japanese wild boar and that of the standard farm pig, and thus do not know which is tastier.

**Dogeza**: An important form of bowing (if it could be called that) is dogeza, where someone prostrates themselves on the ground, their heads facing down and their hands (and sometimes head) on the ground (I'm not sure if that technically counts as bowing). You've likely seen the position in manga/anime before, and characters also do it when they fall into despair or everything just goes wrong (in comedies). It is the most apologetic bow one can give, and is the most humble way of asking for a favor. It was once used as a way of showing one's inferiority to someone of a higher class, but it has largely lost that meaning today. It isn't something one does lightly (unless you're a comedian), and should be used for serious occasions (such as trying to kill one's teacher).

**Ojō-sama**: A young, high-class girl. Directly translated, it means 'daughter', which goes to show why people should avoid direct translations. I shouldn't be explaining this… Anyways, I personally prefer the spelling "ojou-sama", but in the interest of story consistency I'll use the other romanization.  
>Incidentally, I mentioned in an earlier author's notes the "ojō""ōjo" difference, which isn't too big. But "ōjō", on the other hand, is a word for death—specifically, dying a happy death. Considering the Japanese fondness for wordplay and puns that don't really make the translation into English, I wonder how many references to that have shown up that we've missed?

**Henge**: You'll likely recall this word from the Henge no Jutsu, but what it is (and where the technique came from) is a term for youkai who shapeshift.

**Motoko-nēsama**: To be more specific, she's Konoka's second cousin on her father's side, once removed. Seeing as I'm pretty certain there is not a word in Japanese for that, I went with the respectful elder sister term instead. Sibling honorifics are rather versatile.

**Cursed Toxins**: Ordinary poisons are rarely difficult to treat in worlds with mystic powers (although certain toxins possess a more than physical presence that resists magic). Ergo, a poisoner-to-be trying to get someone with magical companions would need a compound beyond what nature would normally provide. There are other types of magically-enhanced poisons and venoms where the mundane and magical aspects interact differently, but this particular one works as described by Kaede, and elaborated upon here. This form of cursed toxin depends on the physical carrier only to keep itself from being easily cured; the mundane poison's effects are completely overridden by the curse's, which (apart from letting one tailor the poison more to their liking) also serves to hide what the mundane poison is, making curing it harder.

Cursed poisons are a creation of my own, although I _may_ have read something similar in some story or other… but I don't actually remember ever doing so, so it's original enough.

**The Kōga Clan**: Although shinobi had appeared before then, the first actual, real-life ninja villages were started in the Kōga and Iga provinces (and were named thusly). These produced the first ninja with professional, organized training, and so of course were the ones people wanted to hire the most. The name can also be Romanized as "Kōka.

**Ninja Ranks of Mundus Vetus**: The ranks follow the order of seniority in Naruto, proceeding from genin to chūnin to jōnin, which is a system that was around before the Kōga Clan came around. However, genin weren't rookies, but the basic mission-performing field units; the jōnin was the highest ranked and the representative of the group, responsible for hiring out his ninja; chūnin were basically those who fell in-between, holding a great deal of authority, planning strategies, teaching new ninja, and directing genin on their missions. It's rather like every rank in Naruto took a step up… anyways, the Kōga didn't originally use the position of jōnin (or didn't use the name, more accurately—ranks only went up to chūnin).

_**Hyakuretsu Ōkazan**_: "Flaming Slash of 100 Cherry Blossoms", although you could alternatively use "Sword of a Hundred Flaming Cherry Blossoms", or "Death of a Hundred Ardent Cherry Blossom Cuts". As the Shinmei-ryū warrior swings her sword, she draws out her chi and channels it out through the blade in a tight pack. Using the circular motion of her swing to direct it, she then 'breaks' that condensed chi like glass into a swarm of razor-thin shards that swirl around her body before dissipating, slicing apart anything around her. After being condensed like that, the resulting chi is visible, and due to the training methods of the Shinmei School is almost universally a quiet pink only a scant few shades from being white. The light reflected off of these shining shards dancing around her body can make it seem as though the warrior had set the very air aflame.


	15. Missing

If there is anything here that is legal-action-against-the-fanfic-author-worthy, I don't own whatever it is.

And here you go—the other half of the chapter, which I have for once delivered on time.

The chapter title comes from the Evanescence song of the same. The lyrics had nothing to do with that choice.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 15:<strong>

**Missing**

Negi adjusted his glasses several times on the way back down to the first floor. He felt like a wound-up spring from the tension that continued to build as they waited for the Kansai extremist faction to appear. Nervous tics like that weren't surprising.

What had been surprising was what Naruto had told him about Mana. It had not been pleasant. While Naruto continued his search for Setsuna, he had gone to Group 4's room to look at her ailment himself. He quickly saw that Naruto had spared him some of the details of just how awful their student looked.

Kaede was unfortunately correct in her deduction about his abilities; it was certainly beyond him to remove the cursed poison, or even to attempt to attack the curse in the first place for that matter. It wasn't something he had put more than a cursory study into, enough to recognize important terminology and remove a simple hex from an object—and enough to know that a mistake in removing it would make most curses worse. His ability to heal wasn't entirely undeveloped, but he didn't think he could counteract a poison that had advanced so far.

He bitterly bemoaned that he hadn't put more study into either field.

Still, Negi had refused to leave without taking at least some action to help her. His answer was to refresh her, revitalizing her much as he had his students for their test after that entire Library Island affair.

It didn't heal her, nor could it fight the curse, nor push away the poisons. But a body and mind well-rested is one most prepared to fight against foreign influences, and he could only hope that if he returned over the night to cast the spell again she might be able to survive it. He didn't know Mana very well—hadn't even known she was involved with magic until Naruto had told him, actually!—but as one of his precious students it still hurt him to see her in such a state.

He caught sight of Chizuru and Chisame walking down the hall. Negi's stomach flipped. They shouldn't be out! No student could be out of bed tonight. It was dangerous, way too dangerous!

But that wasn't reason to snap at them. "Hi girls! Sorry, but it'll be lights out in only a few minutes, so you should go on to your rooms."

"Yes, Sensei," grumbled Chisame. She refused to look at his eyes, light glinting off her glasses to hide her face. Inside, Negi begged her to forgive him. Hadn't he already apologized for accidentally blowing her bunny suit apart (in public), even if he couldn't exactly tell her what had happened?

And those glasses—sure, she needed them to see, but to Negi it looked like she hid behind them just as much. The only eye contact he could remember her making was through the intermediary of her Chiu-chan alias and a computer screen.

"We will, Negi-sensei," Chizuru replied. As she walked away her eyes asked him a question, to which he nodded.

Kaede had brought up similar concerns to those Chizuru had earlier in the day, but with the greater detail a friend could bring to the table. Negi thought there were a couple of things she hadn't told him for the sake of privacy, but what she had painted yet more of the eminently disturbing picture that had been dragged out into the light over the course of the day.

Negi wouldn't pry into it. He'd promised as much, and it wouldn't help whatever was wrong with Naruto's image of himself if he forced the matter. But the weight of another troubling concern settled onto his shoulders nonetheless.

Fortunately, Naruto wasn't one of those concerns that were currently unconscious or trying to attack him. That was a silver lining, right? Maybe?

Negi shook his head as he walked down to the first floor. It was more of a well-polished iron lining at best. But he had no more time to consider the figurative metallic composition of cloud linings, as he could see Naruto and Asuna sitting at one of the curved couches in front of small tables in the lobby. Three other such couches and tables graced that section of the lobby, the rounded furniture spaced so as to form the outline of a circle.

"Sorry for taking so long. I think I might have made a small difference, but our best bet would be to hope that one of the attackers has the antidote or can tell us what it is."

Asuna grimaced. "They'd better have it on hand. I thought that what happened to Makie and Class Rep pissed me off, but this is even worse."

"I can certainly understand that," Negi agreed, although he felt more worried than angry. The enemy just didn't have a face to be angry _at_. "Were you waiting for me to get back?"

"No, that wasn't it," said Naruto. "Setsuna came by here just a little while after you went to see Mana. She stuck some sort of paper slip over the doorway and then left. She said she'd be back soon, though." His assistant teacher sounded troubled and kept wringing his right hand in his left. Questions rose up in response, but if he asked he doubted they'd be finished by the time Setsuna returned.

Although Naruto's behavior caught his attention as a friend, his words caught his interest as a mage. '_Paper slip_?' Negi took a seat beside Asuna, although his attention had turned to the door.

There was definitely a thin, rectangular cut of paper up there, but he couldn't feel any magic from it even when he actively tried to sense for it. Was it some method of hiding the power, or did one need to be closer to feel Oriental magic residing in an object?

Then Setsuna was putting up a second paper tag similarly equidistant from the edges of the door. She was just _there_—Negi couldn't tell if it was from an instant movement technique so she could finish her task faster or if she was simply very experienced at not being noticed. Through the glass doors behind her, he could see the stairs leading up from the main entrance to ground level outside.

Either way, he was so glad Chamo had been wrong! Despite the gravity of the situation, the knowledge that his student wasn't trying to murder him warmed his heart. That he had for even a moment been suspicious of his own student had struck him with guilt as a teacher.

She stepped down and returned the chair she had stood on to reach the headboard above the door to its original position, which Negi hadn't noticed her move it from. He thought he saw her furtively glance in their direction before sighing and shifting in their direction. Negi got the feeling she wasn't exactly looking forward to the upcoming conversation, although that may have been because of how Asuna and Naruto had last seen her.

Running away naked into the night could cause embarrassment like that. Generally speaking.

"Hello Setsuna-san!"

"Hey Sakurazaka-san, took you long enough."

"Please forgive my tardiness, Negi-sensei, Kagurazaki-san, Naruto-sensei."

Naruto, seated at the opposite end of the couch from them, leaned forwards when she neared. He smiled, but it was blatantly strained. "That's nothing. We aren't on a time crunch yet, so being a little late isn't bad. Um… those are ofuda, right? What were you doing with them?" His gaze dipped towards those remaining in her hands. Extensive writing in a language he didn't know covered one side of the forearm-length pieces of paper, along with a mystic symbol (the only one he could see featured a pentagram). They were somewhat larger than ofuda normally were, from his understanding of them. Maybe it was because of what they were used for?

"Wait, I was supposed to greet you too, wasn't I?" Naruto's sheepish grin was more honest this time. "Hi."

Ofuda were protective charms from a Shinto shrine, typically inscribed on paper. He had never got around to asking someone about it, but he had been almost certain that the talismans would have at least a small role to play in the Japanese magical traditions.

He was surprised that Naruto had recognized them, considering that he was from a different world—but then again, his culture did have an unusual number of parallels to Japan's.

Setsuna folded the ofuda and tucked them out of sight. "I was establishing a protective field around the ryokan. I don't have the ability to put up powerful protections around a structure this large, but the kanji for 'shikigami' layered with a kuji-kiri grid should be enough to keep any more of them from entering the building, now that I've put one of these over each of the entrances to the building." Naruto's immediate dive into questions had distracted her from whatever embarrassing thoughts she had called up.

"But you weren't gone that long," Naruto pointed out. "How did you put one over every window on the building?"

That was a good point. And aside from the time, it would have taken a lot of paper to put those up for every window in the entire inn.

Setsuna shook her head. "That would have taken too long, and it wouldn't have been too hard for someone to notice I was visiting every window in the building. They could have just rushed ahead of me and sent a shikigami through before I completed the barrier."

"Wait, so that—"

"I wasn't finished, Naruto-sensei," Setsuna reprimanded him with a small, but heated, glare. Could it be that she was still upset over Naruto trying to interrogate her as a spy? "I ended up hiding one of the talismans under the overhang of the roof on all four sides, in addition to the ones at the doors."

"I didn't feel like anyone was watching me, so I think they didn't notice—but I had to put it out there to give it a broader effect. With that, the barrier still covers all the windows, it's just… weaker. I'm grateful to have enclosed the building at all—that was the last ofuda I had that was suitable for creating a protective field." Her annoyed face quite clearly said that she wasn't going to bring so few next time she left home.

He supposed that was the best defense they could hope for in that regard, and it was more than they already had. Along with his own protections established outside the ryokan, they would at least be prepared should their mystery assailant make another attack. The wards he had set up wouldn't hold up against another mage out for long—but the most important part was the layer behind that which would trigger a silent alarm at any change in the first barrier or any attempt to cross its much less obvious border.

They didn't have the resources to hole up like a turtle in armor in a walled fortress on a cliff, so foreknowledge was their most important defense.

"A magic swordsman… so you were using magic back then…" Naruto muttered.

"Not at all. One of the unique traits of the onmyōdō is that almost all of the skills of the early and intermediate teachings can be accomplished through chi as well as magic. Mages have a better affinity for it, but if one cares to study there are a wide variety of spells or charms at hand even for someone who can't wield magic at all. What I have learned is only to complement my skills with a blade." She looked at him askance. "But I thought you would have noticed that—if you weren't using chi, surely it must have been magic? If I had used magic to enhance my movements, you would have felt it, would you not?"

Negi hurried to speak up. "Naruto-kun is a unique case. He's inherited abilities that deviate from the standard practices of magic or chi." Making sound like just a family trait made him feel guiltily like he was lying (even though it was technically the truth), but Negi wasn't certain they had time for a proper explanation of the world-hopping ninja. He silently promised to explain properly after this night's ordeal was over.

Naruto didn't speak up as they discussed him, his eyes dropping to stare at his hands.

Setsuna nodded. "I see. And you, Kagurazaka-san?" The swordsman's eyes fell on Asuna, quietly judging as they ran up and down her form. "Since when have you been involved in the hidden world of magic? You've never moved away from the normal life of a student before this."

She sat down at the nearby edge of a neighboring sectional sofa, which put a small distance between them. There was certainly still room on theirs for someone else, with Naruto staying on the very end of the couch as he was. The casual manner of her choice seemed to Negi to be one of someone used to separating herself from others.

"Well, someone had to keep Negi from messing things up, right?" W-wait, what was that? No, no someone didn't! He didn't make that many mistakes! Did he?

His eyes widened, focused on nothing, as he began to envision all the mistakes he may have made. So terrible were his sins that his hands vibrated from their quivering.

Negi missed the look Asuna cast at him when she said that, and so missed the smile his reaction her teasing elicited. "But I'm already in hip-deep, and Negi—the whole class, really—needs help, so…"

She trailed off, but Asuna didn't actually need to finish the sentence. The rest of them nodded as she finished speaking, everyone feeling the same need in face of the dangers the day had placed before them.

"Right then!" Chamo piped up, obviously not wanting to be overlooked and annoyed that he hadn't had a place in the conversation thus far. "Let's get the most important thing out of the way before we continue—Sakurazaki Setsuna, you are not our enemy, correct?"

Setsuna sighed. She didn't seem surprised by the talking mustelid, although considering that she was a magic swordsman someone like Chamo must not be all that shocking. "_No_. I thought this had been made clear by now." A hard look was sent Naruto's way with that.

"It's not my fault! I agreed you weren't a spy, didn't I? And I was there when you saved Konoka. I already know you aren't a Kansai agent."

"It was just a question that needed to get asked, Setsuna-nēsan! We suspected you, so asking out loud helps that suspicion die down is all. Hehehe… ehe… Sorry about that." Chamo laughed nervously. Subject to Asuna's glare, he hastily corrected himself. "Well, I suspected you, and that kept everyone worried."

"Right, but that's over now! This crazy ermine was just being paranoid. But having someone who can actually fight with us is a huge relief, Sakurazaki-san."

"A-Asuna! You can't just ignore me like that! Ninja here, remember?"

"A ninja whose head doesn't even reach my shoulder! And it wasn't you who stopped the monkeys, was it?" Asuna shot back.

"Ugyuu…" A wounded sound emerged from Naruto's lips at Asuna's painful truth. He looked rather like she had punched him in the gut while he wasn't looking.

Setsuna nodded. "A shinobi… I thought as much, although I've never met one with such terrible form in martial arts."

"U-u-uugyuuu…"

It sounded like he was choking on words, leaving only half of a sound to come out. Naruto's head sank until his brow was pressed against the glass table in front of the sectional couch.

Negi had to step in before Naruto's pride was stepped on any further. "Setsuna-san, do you know anything about the sorcerers who've been harassing us today? Oriental magic isn't something that any of us know much about."

The pale girl directed her attention to him. The sensation of being judged before her eyes was unnerving. Was she wondering about how useful he would be should a fight break out? He couldn't think of another reason—or at least, with the looming presence of such a battle so central to his thoughts he couldn't.

"It doesn't sit well with me that someone as young as you is already involved in something so dangerous," Setsuna said. Negi hid the grimace of frustration the phrase evoked with practiced ease—even if the wording was different, it was a sentence he was very familiar with. His age had been a barrier to him for a long time. Particularly in those years following that winter's night—

Negi shut the thought away before it could progress, and slid it into the back of his mind. This evening would be a spectacularly inconvenient time to get lost in thought and memories.

But Setsuna hadn't finished speaking. "But I've heard that you are a powerful mage… I haven't seen that myself, but I do know that you're already a major target and so can't be expected to simply stand aside. And of course, if this conflict escalates any further it would only put Ojō-sama in more danger. My discomfort isn't important in face of that. I'll tell you what I can."

Negi beamed gratitude at her through his eyes. Her approval made him feel proud despite hardly knowing her. Maybe it was because she was a magic swordsman that could cut through boulders.

Good thing magic could patch that up… although the standard repairing spells were frustratingly slow at their task.

Setsuna began to explain, her features showing nothing but the gravity by which she took her mission. "The majority of the magic you'll see from a sorcerer of the Kansai Magic Association falls under one of the disciplines of onmyōdō—the way of yin and yang. An onmyōji has the same limits as you wizards do—channeling tools are still needed to use onmyōdō, even for someone who uses chi like I do."

Channeling tool, focusing instrument, casting device, magic-activation item… those were just some of the many, oft-interchanged names for the items a mage might use to enable him or herself to actualize magic in the form of a spell (although the last term was the one most commonly used in magical academia). Cut and unflawed crystals, a ritually prepared deck of cards, magically forged jewelry or crowns, consecrated religious symbols, or the various components used in alchemy were also well-known magic-activation items.

The staff and wand were of course the most archetypical and widespread of these.

Negi was surprised—not that the sorcerers of Japan followed the rules of magic despite their different magical traditions (of course they still did), but that even a chi-wielder would require a channeling tool.

The word choice made more sense in this case, as it wasn't magic that Setsuna was activating (despite the tendency of magic to be used as a blanket term for supernatural energies as a whole). But how did that work in the first place?

"I've never heard of items being required to use chi before. But then again, I've never heard of magic and chi both usable for the same spell, either," Negi mused aloud. There were some magical items that could be set off with just a touch of power, but that was different from actually casting. "It could be that it's the use of the channeling tool that enables someone with a different power to use hers in imitation of magic… but something that could be broadly applied, such as a wand, couldn't possibly achieve that."

Still, he didn't know how someone would design a device that produced the same result when exposed to two energies that with such fundamentally different behaviors. Oh, there were a lot of areas of overlap between magic and chi, but even in that respect _how_ the person used that power was different with each of the two sources.

Setsuna stared at him in quiet surprise. "Th-that, I can't answer. Such matters are more the domain of researchers or experienced sorcerers than a practitioner like me… I don't know if your average onmyōji would have an answer either. Although if you want to know about channeling items, the most common would be the ofuda. In fact, the aspect of onmyōjutsu focusing on their use is so widely studied that the titles of 'talisman master' and 'onmyōji' have become all but synonyms."

Negi stared in interest as she pulled out one of those slips of paper, this one having only one word repeated in sprawling letters all over it, in both Sanskrit and kanji. At least he _thought_ the part in Sanskrit was the same as the kanji. It was smaller than the first ofuda he'd seen her place above the door.

He reached out for it–and, when she nodded, took it in his hand. With it in his hand he could easily feel the magic potential held within the ofuda. He assumed he had been too inexperienced with oriental magic to notice it from a distance. Although it feeling like magic at all seemed out of place, considering that Setsuna wasn't a mage.

On that thought… he felt _too much_ power in the paper seal. "Ah… Setsuna, this doesn't feel like a focus instrument…" he nervously squeaked out, carefully setting the ofuda on the table. "Is this safe? It is actually one of yours, right?"

"Yes to both." Setsuna answered very quickly, before Naruto and Asuna could do more than tense at the possible danger Negi had just brought up. "This ofuda was, originally, just a channeling tool. But once I inscribed the spell onto it and imbued it with my chi, it is completed as a proper talisman. All that is needed to activate it and finish the spell is another use of chi and a short chant, most often less than your wizardry requires. Onmyōji who use magic instead of chi frequently don't need to say anything at all, unless they want to pull more power from the ofuda."

Negi looked at the seal in his hands. "Are you… are you saying that by inscribing the spell onto the ofuda, you've essentially converted the incantation into writing? Not merely storing the effects of the spell, or holding an already cast one in stasis in an uncompleted state, but actually setting the casting of the spell into written form? If all you have to do is finish an incantation that's almost complete, an onmyōji could toss out two, maybe three spells in the time it would take me to cast one!"

It was brilliant and more than a little worrying. He didn't know what preparation the ofuda needed before it was suitable for use as a channeling tool, but once made it was literally a spell someone carried around with them. Creating magical items, brewing potions—those took time, effort, and money, and such products weren't things to be casually expended. Those could create a similar outcome to the ofuda… but if it was the main method of spellcasting here, the talismans must be much easier to make. And unlike the above, an ofuda would contain an actual, entire spell rather than just the end result of one.

The distinction may not seem important in terms of pure practicality or exploding fireballs, but academically and conceptually it was a drastic difference.

And having the spell cast in the form of the written word… the physical nature of the incantation could very well play a role in directing differing energies towards the same result. The markings on the ofuda didn't serve the proper purpose of magical runes (runes certainly didn't work like that!), but might serve a similar, if altered, purpose. Negi couldn't think of any other branch of magic that accomplished what quite Japan's sorcerers did with their talismans.

That might also explain why her chi felt like magic when in the ofuda—the words (or the preparations required to make the paper slip a focus instrument) could very well be altering the chi entering it to take on properties similar to those of magic in order to achieve the same effects. That would certainly explain why mages were better at using ofuda.

"Yes. An onmyōji's strongest advantage in magical combat is the readied spells she has at hand and the speed at which she can throw them out. In addition to that, it's difficult to interrupt their casting in the short span it takes them to cast the spell. Those who train in the aspect of onmyōjutsu that focuses of ofuda are called 'talisman masters', but as I mentioned it is so broadly studied that the word and onmyōji are all but the same."

Setsuna coughed and turned her head away. "Having now answered your question… I would prefer it if you would not call me an onmyōji. I do know some of their arts, but am by no means comparable to an actual sorcerer, nor do I cleave as closely to the philosophy of the path as a true onmyōji would. What onmyōjutsu I use is, again, only that which supplements my skills with the sword."

As Negi rushed to apologize, Asuna gave voice to the shared concern Setsuna had given life. "If the mages here can play "magic machine gun", what are we supposed to do? With only one of Negi's spells for every two or three of theirs… even he'd get knocked down by that!"

Her hand came up to grasp his shoulder while she talked, pulling him slightly towards her. Negi awkwardly adjusted his glasses. It wasn't that he thought himself any manner of experienced battle mage, but knowing that Asuna was right was still mortifying. But still, it wasn't so one-sided as that, because—

"Negi might, _if_ the mage actually has the spells for it," Naruto said, raising his head from the table. "The sorcerer still has limits of his own—how fast he can pull out an ofuda, how many he has, and most importantly, what spells he thought to inscribe on his talismans. Or _her_ talismans, I suppose."

Negi mentally applauded Naruto for his analysis. That said, he did miss—

"This is true, but you didn't mention their other flaw," Setsuna elaborated. "An onmyōji cannot bring into battle ofuda bearing _all_ of the spells she knows. With so many paper seals, they would take too much time to sort through to find the magic she's actually looking for. She is limited in both number and variety of talismans, and would be forced to turn to a likely less practiced style of magic once they're gone."

The bells in Asuna's hair chimed as she shook her head from side to side. "That still sounds really bad. Especially if there's more than one, or if they start slinging paper at us while we're busy with their Minister. "

"If it's only one or two, then Asuna and either me or Setsuna should be able to at least occupy the Minister Magi, while the other and Negi took on the actual mages. I could possibly divert their attention by myself if necessary, though… I don't think I could actually beat them, especially if they were wielding those magic artifacts Negi mentioned, but I'm…

Naruto's eyes dropped away and the confidence left his voice. "I'm… very good at healing myself."

Negi didn't think that was what Naruto was originally going to say.

"That won't be necessary, Naruto-sensei," Setsuna replied after staring at the shinobi. "And encountering a Minister or Ministra isn't going to be a problem, considering that one of the reasons for these attacks is to prevent the peace talks between the Elders of the Magic Associations. The Headmaster told me about the mission he assigned to you," she added as an aside to Negi.

"Why not? What difference does that make?" Asuna asked, obviously confused.

Setsuna explained before Negi could. "What's happened so far has almost certainly been due to the Honganji or Junsuibi Faction—two groups of fanatic traditionalists that have between them a small, but not insignificant, following in the Association. They refuse to use magic that isn't a part of the long-established Japanese magical tradition." Setsuna shook her head in disgust. "And then in their purist pride they use what should be treasured teachings of magic and chi to split the magical side of our nation in half."

"That's awful… but it means we know what range of abilities they have. Still, what does that have to do with Ministra?"

Setsuna cast an annoyed look in Naruto's direction. "If you'd let me finish talking, I'd answer that." He sheepishly turned his gaze to the floor as Setsuna began explaining. "Although I've been told the spirits of the Pactio can be easily called anywhere, the Pactio ritual came from overseas, and not so far back in history that the shamefully extreme would consider it to have become a part of Japan's magical culture."

"However, their reliance on ofuda makes them as vulnerable to attack as an occidental wizard like you, Negi-sensei. If you want to use a spell it leaves you open to attack, which could also break up your casting; an onmyōji has to draw out her ofuda, which as objects could be destroyed or taken away from her. An attack strong enough to knock her around might also throw a number of them out of wherever she's stored them."

"But they have another line of defense," Negi stated as he considered what she said. "It would be impossible for a tradition with a vulnerability like that to survive unless the mages developed a means to protect themselves. For something unlike the Pactio… something Japanese, ready at hand whenever the mage would need protection…"

"… are they using shikigami?"

"N-not quite," Setsuna replied, her mouth gaping open a little bit once he finished. "Although in a sense you are correct. A shikigami is made similarly to an ofuda, but after you've cut the paper into the shape of what the shikigami will imitate you install an animating spirit into it. These are rarely very powerful—most spirits that can be contained are weak, although there are some exceptions."

"Protecting a mage requires greater strength than that. By creating specially prepared and personalized paper vessels to hold them—which I'll note that I cannot make—the onmyōji can infuse up to two, and never more than two, seals with demons summoned as part of the ritual."

"A… demon?" Naruto asked. No, that wasn't right—it was some unpleasant mix of a demand and a plea combined into a single sound that broke from the restrained emotion in his voice. The color drained completely from his face, making his dark whisker marks stand out in contrast. The small motion of Setsuna's eyes guiltily flicking down to the table went completely unnoticed compared to the study in flagrant emotion Naruto displayed.

That was right… he also had been upset by that old tsukumogami lady when they first met for tea, and he was terrified of the puppet Chachazero. Of course Naruto would be disconcerted over demons.

His instant judgment in response to the word was irrational. Still, Negi couldn't deny that the word stirred uncomfortable sensations within him as well, and he shivered from the phantom chill of snowy memories.

"Two demons, she said." Negi turned the whole of his attention to the subject of talisman masters and defenses, burying the feeling deep in his mind.

Setsuna's eyes flicked up from their study of the flower vase on the table. She looked… somehow even _less_ happy than her already completely serious face and sharp eyes had shown. "That's correct. These demons are called the Zenki and Goki; the Greater Demon most suited for aggressive attacks as the vanguard, and the Guardian Demon which remains behind to protect its master or serve as the rearguard should the onmyōji need to retreat."

"The primary method of obtaining them is to summon and bargain with a demon; the second, for the talisman master to summon only the soul or even just its power into the paper seal. This allows them to modify the resulting 'demon' without worrying about the original's consent. Either way, these demons are, technically, in the same class of being as a shikigami—but by virtue of their power and the unusual nature of spirit they hold, the difference between them and other shikigami is great enough that few think of them as the same."

"That sounds like a terrible idea," Naruto butted in. He shook his head with a pitying grin. "I can't imagine a demon not coming back for vengeance after having something so precious stolen by a mere human."

His previous upset had disappeared, leaving Naruto bearing a smile that was neither too small nor too large than could comfortably fit into the conversation. There was nothing to hint at how almost traumatically horrified he had been only seconds before.

And that disturbed Negi more than any of Naruto's casual mentions of violence and death ever had.

So intent was Negi on trying to find flaws in Naruto's smile that he almost missed Setsuna's response.

"That is occasionally a problem—and was more in far older times," she admitted. But she quickly qualified her statement, which Negi imagined was to keep from casting the magic of Japan in a bad light. "And of course, the sorcerers who do this are those who don't care to make a bargain with the demon, often because it would result in a more equal partnership than they're willing to accept. So, for the past several centuries such soon-to-be summoners have taken to using more extensive divinations before starting the ritual. By finding one of the older demons that has slept for years or decades—some demons are like dragons in that regard—they can use as much of its power as they can handle and later return it without waking the spirit at all."

Negotiating a contract with a demon… how unlike the preset terms of the probationary Pactio contract. And more risky, even though demons were hardly as malicious as (mostly occidental) culture depicted them—magical bargains had a long history of being exploited by either side. Considering how some demons looked, he hoped the differences included _not_ sealing the deal with a kiss.

"And the soul part? I… I didn't think demons even had them."

"No, that's… wrong. Most demons do."

"Oh."

Naruto and Setsuna's exchange was subdued. Setsuna looked uncomfortable at the topic, which wasn't as striking a change as Naruto, who had lost his fake smile and couldn't seem to actually meet anyone's eyes.

Negi mentally catalogued the conversation and its result as important information for the ongoing mysteries of "Who is Naruto?", "What's Wrong with Naruto?", and the relatively new one, "Who is this Setsuna Girl, Anyways?"

To prevent the dismal air from growing any greater—Negi rather thought what was coming was worrying enough already—he spoke up. "So even if it's only one onmyōji, that's the mage and _two_ demons? Demons, who have their own powers to use via youki?"

Maybe talking about how dangerous it would be wasn't a good topic for that.

"Yes… but it may be even worse than that," Setsuna said, in the most worrying way that anyone had ever agreed with him. She seemed more at ease talking about dangerous conspirators than demon souls. "This would be because of the Kyoto branch of Shinmei-Ryū."

Negi stared on in confusion, not understanding why her fellow swordsmen would be a danger, as she continued. "Shinmei-Ryū originated from a band of some of the foremost warriors in Japan. Their leader, Aoyama Kojirō,developed the style to protect Kyoto back when it was the capital, forming it also to vanquish the demons and youkai who in that time had become a widespread danger."

Setsuna sighed and looked down. "Because of this, Kyoto is the center of learning for Shinmei-ryū, and of the styles composing the school, Kyoto Shinmei-ryū is the most frequently taught. As Kyoto is also the home of the Kansai Magic Association, the two groups have long held a close bond. It is not uncommon for an onmyōji to request for a swordsman from the Shinmei School to accompany him or her for a time as a bodyguard. The last denial of such a request was in 1937. There are certainly many within the school who would also hate the East."

"It would practically be overkill at that point to bring in anyone else," Naruto said, looking closer to what Negi thought to be normal for Naruto. "A spell-slinging sorcerer in the back, who you'd have to get past two demons to reach—who have their own supernatural powers on hand—_and_ a sword lady who can cut through stone? Just one onmyōji could sweep away a smaller group by numbers alone. We're lucky there're four of us."

"Hey, it ain't that bad!" Chamo said from beside Negi's ear. His longtime friend hopped down from his shoulder to the table so as to seen better. "We've got those trap circles out there, and if a troop of four tries to storm the inn they're bound to cross at least one of them. And you said your Shinmei-ryū was strong against demons, right? That's at least half of the group that would enter, but our side doesn't have any."

"O-of course we don't."

"No, no demons here!"

Chamo nodded. "Right, so picking them off should be easy!"

"I suppose that… wait a moment." Naruto cocked his head to the left and peered at Chamo. "I wondered about this before, but I forgot about it. You… didn't I hear your voice in the onsen?"

The ermine froze. "Er—no. No you didn't."

"Now that you mention it, I recall it too. Didn't you advise Naruto that it didn't seem like I was a spy?

Sweat trickled down Chamo's back. "Ah… aha… ha, aha… no, that… aha, that d-didn't happen…"

"Yeah, that's right—you do sound like that perverted voice from the changing room!"

His eyes were dead, empty circles of white, devoid of anything that could resemble hope or life. "S-save me…"

Despite Chamo's indefatigable perversion, Negi still had to help his old friend. "But it couldn't have been him."

* * *

><p>"<em>Ermine senses, tingling…"<em>

"_What? What is it?" Negi had never received a straight answer on what 'ermine senses' were, but Chamo swore by them, which was enough for him._

"_Er… nothing, nothing! Nothing that you'd be interested in, at least. Look, I've got to run; the beautiful au natura—I mean, the beauty of nature is calling me, and I have to go, uh, satisfy my bird watching hobby. Yep, I just need to go photograph some chicks…"_

_Chamo had never struck him as the type to pick up bird watching, but nonetheless his familiar seemed to really like looking at birds. "Oh. Well, alright. What kind?"_

_The white-furred fey leapt from his shoulder and dashed away. "… Titmice!"_

* * *

><p>"So he couldn't have been there."<p>

Chamo gaped in stunned horror at the one that had unwittingly condemned him to a terrible fate. "A-A-Aniki," was all he could whimper before the sound of cracking knuckles drowned out his voice as the shadow of Kagurazaka Asuna darkened his form.

"Wait a moment!" Negi gasped. "Titmice are only native to North America!" Negi of course completely missed the actual problem with Chamo's story.

What followed was a punishment too terrible to retell, save to say that if ever did a nation incorporate it into their justice system, their number of peeping toms would drop by a factor of nine.

Negi could do nothing but cover his remains with a napkin, that Chamo could at least have some dignity in the end.

Thus did Negi learn another lesson about the terror of womankind. Or rather, juniorhighschoolgirlkind.

But the time that great tragedy gave allowed Negi to think over the information Setsuna gave them about their enemy, and the large snag in it that she hadn't addressed.

"Setsuna-san, if the onmyōji does bring one of those swordsmen, doesn't that mean you'd be fighting against your friends who follow Shinmei-ryū?"

Setsuna sat unmoving at his question. Though she seemed to just be ordering her thoughts for an unexpected question, Naruto surprisingly spoke up in her place. "No, she doesn't…"

He trailed off with an awkward roll of his shoulders, backing away from what wasn't his place to explain. Negi noted with some small interest that his coworker seemed to already know the answer to his question, although Naruto hadn't mentioned this topic in their earlier retelling of the events in the onsen.

"No, you don't have to worry, Negi-sensei. I'm not a social person, and knew few that I would actually call friend," Setsuna finally said in a voice that held no bitterness. "Due to my decision to follow Ojō-sama to Mahora, those ties have been broken. For choosing to go to school in the territory of the Kanto Magic Association—at their home city, no less—the swordsmen of Kyoto Shinmei-ryū see me as a traitor."

Yet, even as she spoke of her estrangement from her own home, Setsuna's lips still curved into a smile. "I don't mind. Where I am didn't matter to me; to fulfill my desire to protect Konoka-ojōsama, I would follow her wherever she might go."

"So long as I am able to keep her safe, I am content."

Negi couldn't find the words to respond. This person, who follows Konoka without care for herself, had been the one to worry the warm-hearted girl so much? He could scarcely believe it when she sat in front of him, this girl who found fulfillment in nothing more than watching a once-friend from a distance. And yet… despite her peaceful tone, he could not believe that.

'_I am content._'

That was wrong. For someone to give up friendship to protect someone they refuse to even talk to… no one should be content with that. If Setsuna actually was, then it didn't change how wrong her situation was. No, it made it even worse.

"Well I'm convinced!" Asuna proclaimed as she walked forwards to clasp Setsuna's shoulder. "I didn't understand all of it, but I definitely get that you don't hate Konoka!"

"Th-that I-I what…!?"

"And that's what matters the most here, right? Because otherwise I would have had to kick you in the head, willing to help us or not," Asuna added, which was _entirely_ unnecessary and led to uncomfortable sweatdropping on the part of all non-Asunas. She patted Setsuna on the back, which being Asuna was twice as forceful as anyone else would do. "So I'm really glad you're here. And doubly glad what with that magic swordsman thing!"

"K-Kagurazaki-san—?"

"Since you're Konoka's friend you're obviously a good person, and my friend too!"

"How does that work?" Naruto asked.

"Well, she's my friend's friend, so my friend's friend is my friend. This also makes me my friend's friend's friend. And obviously my friends are your friends, too… Ah! B-but, if my friend's friend is my friend, doesn't that mean I'm friends with myself?"

"Wh-wh-what?"

Both Naruto and Asuna stopped as they tried to wrap their minds around what she had just said. As the steam rising from their heads indicated, they could not.

"S-stop!" Negi called out to stop them from overheating. "If you think about it so hard that you break, what will 3-A's Guardian Angels do? We'd have only two members!"

He realized his mistake as soon as he said it, and regretted it as soon as everyone's attention and puzzled gazes turned to him. He hadn't intended to actually say that aloud.

Still, he tried to bring his blush under control and to go ahead and roll with what had fallen out of his mouth. "A-ah, that is… seeing as how we're protecting the class from attack, 'Guardian Angels' fits, if we… er… need to mention this during the day."

Flat faces told him that they weren't buying his excuse.

Asuna shook her head. "You decide to act like an actual kid at the weirdest times."

B-but… he thought the name was good…

Setsuna pushed to move the subject back to something actually important, although he thought having a team name was a good topic of discussion. "Since we've summarized the abilities the enemy will most likely bring against us—we would only be blindly guessing if we tried to continue—we need now to look at our own so that we can form a working strategy."

Negi nodded, but only listened with half an ear as Setsuna described her own skills as they would apply to combat—from her description of her style's origins and what Naruto had told of their fight, it fell largely within what one would expect of a magical demon-hunting swordman. He knew Asuna's already, of course, so the only one he really paid attention to was the haltering words of Naruto. Which wasn't much—Setsuna ended up describing Naruto better than the actual boy did.

No, what occupied Negi's thoughts was, as the sword-wielding schoolgirl had said, strategy. Well, that sounded presumptuous—he didn't have any experience with combat to feel comfortable thinking of that so casually, but there wasn't a synonym for the word that had less dramatic connotations and still applied so completely to the situation at hand.

An onmyōji, a swordsman, and two demons. They'd be lucky if Chamo's scenario happened as planned and took out a fourth of the group; otherwise they were faced with the problem of where to put Setsuna. She was the best choice to counter another follower of Shinmei-ryū, as Naruto had already shown that he wasn't quite as good as her and although it seemed like Asuna had a sword as her artifact, she didn't know how to use it.

On the other hand, Shinmei-ryū specialized in fighting demons, and Setsuna might very well be able to take on both the Greater and Guardian Demons at once. In that case, Naruto and Asuna together could possibly keep the opposing swordsman tied down until Setsuna exorcised the summoned demons.

Negi mentally frowned, his mouth absentmindedly recounting his range of spells that held relevance to their crisis. Setsuna was undeniably the most powerful of the four of them, but it wasn't good to rely so heavily on her. After all, one person could be… incapacitated. He didn't want to think of more drastic words than that.

The sorcerer, though, could completely change everything. They really had no idea what he or she used… well, that would make her a sorceress, if that was the case. The ways magic could be used approached the infinite, and knowing the onmyōji would almost certainly wield ofuda gave no warning regarding what spells those ofuda would unleash. Nor did it say anything of what other forms of onmyōjutsu the sorcerer might know.

He would have to take the offensive, and try to keep the other mage moving at his pace. He wouldn't be able to keep up with an onslaught of ofuda, and if the sorcerer used indirect magic then giving him—or her—time to act could be even more disastrous than if she just attacked.

"Our biggest advantages at the moment are the traps we've set up around the ryokan," Negi finally said as the round of expositing talent reached its end. "A flytrap spell can hold almost anything, at least for a short time, and establishes the first layer of the bind in a minute fraction of a second. And although my barrier around the inn would do no more than slow any decent mage, a second and more sensitive barrier will give me the alarm if the first is disturbed even slightly."

"Is that so?" Setsuna questioned, seemingly half to herself. "If we drew up the area around the building, could you mark down the boundary of the field, and the locations of the flytrap spells?"

"Yes, but I'd need some paper…"

To Negi's surprise, it was Asuna who pulled out a small notepad of lineless paper and a pencil. At his disbelieving stare she defended herself. "I _am_ in the Art Club, you know!"

But wasn't she in that just to sigh at Takamichi? Still, that Asuna carried around sketch paper even in non-Takamichi related situations made Negi feel oddly proud, despite not being involved in the Art Club at all. He didn't know she had an interest in it apart from the club's advisor.

Negi drew a rough estimate of the perimeter of the building, and a more precise outline of the outside of the ryokan property, which his barrier stopped just shy of as it formed a perfect circle around the inn.

Bounded fields, barriers, stronghold dweomercraft… true, he had studied them in more depth than the classes at Meldiana Academy had covered, but that had only been to satisfy his curiosity and understand more of their fundamental principles (which crossed into a number of other fields of magic). He now regretted not having devoted more study time to such large scale protections.

"You did a good job placing your trap spells," Setsuna remarked after he handed the resulting map to her. "They aren't in any sort of pattern, so guessing where they are will be difficult, but you've covered most of the routes they might take to enter the building… how do your flytraps activate?"

"These are attuned so that as soon as anyone steps over one with any type of magic on their person, the spell will tie them to the spot."

Naruto raised his hand like a schoolkid in class. "I set a few traps on the roof, too. They aren't magic or anything, but they might still be useful."

Setsuna sent yet another glare at Naruto. "Yes… 'useful'. I found those, by the way. I'm still not certain how you managed to make them launch upwards from under the tiles."

"Eh? When did—oh, right, you jumped onto… the…" Naruto trailed off as Setsuna held out a handful of kunai and shuriken. More than one of them glistened with what looked alarmingly like blood. Naruto slowly reached out to take them, but when one of her fingers brushed against his he abruptly pulled them all away at once. Setsuna only narrowly avoided getting her fingertips slit open.

"Ah… er… sorry? Shit, um, where did they hit you? I can go get some bandages or—"

"That won't be necessary," Setsuna interrupted in a patient voice. The glare, seemingly a momentary anger, had disappeared. "At least, not if Negi-sensei can do something about it. I heard that he was a powerful wizard, but no one actually knows what magic he uses."

She turned to him with expectant eyes.

There was an unexpected pressure when requested to help by someone who hunted demons. It felt as though her gaze demanded he work at a higher level than he could actually reach. "Er, I did mention my focus of study when you asked me and Asuna. But I can heal too, although I'm not very good at it. Naruto asked a good question: where did they hit you?"

Setsuna slid her leg out of the yukata. Negi grimaced; there was a huge, dangerous-looking contusion at her knee, and three stab wounds that he was thankful hadn't penetrated too deeply. None of the cuts were actively bleeding, which surprised him considering how recently she must have hurt herself and how she had been walking around the inn. She was pretty hardy…

Wait a moment. "Y-you were walking around like this?! Wh-what's wrong with you? You should have come to me sooner, not waited until it just came up in a conversation!"

She pulled back at his outburst, surprise painted on her face. "I-I don't think it's something to get upset about, I just had to finish my rounds through the inn. If I don't put my weight on it, it won't get worse. I haven't been running."

Asuna surprised him by bopping Setsuna on the head. "Ow!"

"That's a horrible reason not to get help!"

Negi agreed. "Now just stay still so I can help. I'm not very good at healing spells, but…"

"_Junonēs, dētrahe foras cute et ossi ista quae dēbilitābat tuum corporem. Visceris Iterum Crēscēns_."

Negi could feel the warmth of magic flow out from his hand and gather, like tiny spiraling stars, around Setsuna's injuries—which also included some heavy bruising on her forearms, a mild sprain in her left wrist paired with a hairline fracture along the ulna bone of the forearm, and a set of mostly-healed scratches near her shoulder blades. The bruises weren't nearly as bad as her knee, but they were certainly something she should have told him about. It didn't do any good to just go walking around with that sort of pain, even if Setsuna didn't realize that the damage was more than skin-deep.

Soothing pulses of heat pulsed out as the spell numbed nerves and grew new skin over where it had been rent, as it worried away at the swelling bruise and sent the gathered, now revitalized, blood on its way back through the body. After seven seconds, the magic faded away, leaving Setsuna's body whole, uninjured, and more refreshed than it had been in a long time.

She looked amazed as she ran her hands down her leg. "I feel amazing! It's like I was never hurt at all—and so quickly, too." She stared at him as though accusing him of a terrible crime. "You said you weren't very good at healing!"

"I'm not! That spell has an incantation that could be halved easily without weakening it at all by someone more experienced at healing. And then there's much greater spells than that, and I'm not nearly good enough to accomplish something like, say, regenerating a limb."

Setsuna stared at him with a blank expression on her face. "I don't think you choose good subjects against which to measure yourself."

Negi was annoyed by that assumption, but didn't know why. Introspection might have shown Negi that it was because Setsuna had, incredibly indirectly, said that since it wasn't a good idea to compare himself against mages who were vastly more advanced than he, it was likewise bad to compare himself against the Thousand Master. However, there was little time for introspection, and so the emotion disappeared as their conversation progressed.

"Sorry to call back something from a bit ago," Asuna butted in, "but you said that Negi covered _most_ of the ways they might try to get in. Do we need to go trap the others, too?"

Naruto shook his head. "We _could_, but ways to get in are also ways to get out. Locking ourselves in without a way to leave could be disastrous if they somehow manage to steal the letter away without triggering the traps. We'd have to stop and take them down before we could pass."

"And by that time, they'd be gone," Setsuna finished for him. "This is their hometown, after all."

"Right. Figures you'd know that… we've got a genius, a ninja, and a demon-hunting sword girl. I really got nothing to contribute for this strategy stuff."

"Just because you aren't trained for it doesn't mean you can't bring up important points," Setsuna replied to Asuna's complaint. "And what you said did remind me of something… Negi-sensei, Naruto-sensei, Kagurazaki-san, have any of you looked at the roads leading to our location?"

It only took Negi a moment to realize what Setsuna was asking about, but Naruto had already risen and grabbed a sightseeing map of Kyoto by then. He was reminded yet again of the ease of understanding Naruto had in regards to matters of violence. Was it just because of the constant warfare in his world, or did it have some other origin? There was something disturbing about it that Negi couldn't quite grasp.

"What do you mean? I thought it looked alright," Asuna said, frowning as she realized she was missing something.

Naruto unfolded the map and jabbed a finger towards the wrong inn. After being corrected and re-jabbing with drama equal to his original attempt, he said, "No, it isn't about what it looks like. What is the terrain around the building? What direction could we expect someone to approach us, and where would they go if they successfully got hold of our stuff?"

The four of them leaned in to discuss the possible danger that Setsuna had brought up, making room for Chamo upon his resurrection.

* * *

><p>Naruto stood in front of the door to his room.<p>

The rest of the meeting had gone smoothly, and the schedule for their patrols left him with extra time. Unfortunately, he knew what the best use for this time was.

He had to apologize to Chachazero.

The thought set his hands quivering as he imagined all the horrible ways that the upcoming confrontation could go wrong. Oh, she wasn't able to move, but he still had his suspicions about the truth of that demon puppet's 'immobility'. It would be safer for him to just sleep outside his room. Hell, it was probably safer to tie himself up and go to sleep on the road outside with a bow on his head and a greeting card taped to his face.

But he _had_ stabbed her in the face with a shuriken, and Naruto felt a twinge of guilt that he had left the paralyzed doll just lying on the ground like that. Just a small twinge, mind, but his overreaction was his own fault… it wasn't like he didn't already expect murderous suggestions from Chachazero.

Blond hair swayed in front of blue eyes as Naruto's head sagged, and his chest heaved with his bracing inhale. And, his eyes as haunted as those of a criminal being dragged to the execution chamber, Naruto opened the door and entered his room.

He immediately regretted it, and wondered if it would be cowardly for him to run before he even spoke to her.

Chachazero was _not_ lying on the floor. Chachazero did _not_ have a shuriken sticking out of her forehead like a demented ninja-unicorn doll.

And she was _smiling_, her wild grin casting over him the same certainty of madness as did the foaming of a rabid dog. But no dog was ever so terrifying as the puppet sitting on his table was at that moment.

Naruto pasted a smile on his face, but his skills were not enough to keep his nervousness from seeping into his expression. "Hi, Chachazero," he managed to say without any shakiness entering his voice.

The light of the room glistened off the puppet's glass eyes. "Hiya! Mmmm, that smell… you got in a fight, didn'cha? I can smell some blo~ood~!"

How the hell did she smell things? She was a doll! She didn't even have a nose! And how could she notice that he had bled, anyways? It was just from his scrapes as he was juggled around the onsen—there weren't even scratches anymore, and what little blood there was had washed away in the water.

Truly, Chachazero had no equal when it came to unsettling him.

"There was a… misunderstanding. Yeah, it turned into a fight—but we eventually figured out that neither of us was turning on the class."

Chachazero gave a noncommittal '_meh'_ at his news. She obviously didn't care about those boring details. She instead peered at him in silence for long, tense minutes, her green eyes trying to pierce into his blue.

"I didn't expect you to come back," she said at last. The noise, after the quiet of her own making, was jarring. So of course his wince wasn't due to her words, just… the sudden sound. Obviously. "At least, not tonight."

Naruto shrugged in obvious discomfort from her gaze. "I didn't really think about that," he admitted. He should have, though—if he had left from his room, he should have put some thought into where he would be sleeping instead.

He steeled himself as he approached her, taking a seat at the table a short distance away from the doll. "You… look good," he awkwardly began.

Her eternal smile mocked him. "Ehehehe, I do, don't I? Having a lethal weapon piercing through your noggin can take away from that though, right? Eeheeheehehehehe~!"

And not the slightest mention of how it was removed. Or how her forehead hadn't so much as a single scratch. Or how in the hells she had managed to get back on the goddamn table.

"You—" Naruto stopped at a single word, Chachazero's stare growing more eager as he tried to speak. "How—"

"Since when—"

"Ehehe, ahahahaha! You can't even ask? Come on, it's not that hard of a question, and I bet you'd be too worried to sleep if you don't spit it out…"

Her knowing grin made his skin break out into trembling goosebumps. "You… Chachazero, how did you get onto the table?"

Chachazero's eyelids fluttered. "That wasn't the question I expected at all! But that's good too… anyways, if I tell you, you have to give me back my hat. Otherwise not knowing can haunt you for however long you want it to."

Naruto's eyebrows rose at her condition. He hadn't paid attention, but she really didn't have her hat… and her hair was all mussed up, quite unlike the well-cared for doll that had been snuck into his bag. A quick look at the floor showed her top hat lying where it had fallen when he had knocked it off her head.

He transferred the hat from the floor to her head, brushing her hair back into a semblance of neatness, and Chachazero sighed in relief. "I feel like a whole new person! Without my hair decorations or hats, it's like I'm just… just… just a sock puppet! Thanks."

Glass eyes shone with gratitude. Insane, murderous gratitude, over being handed a hat. Naruto swallowed. "So… how does a doll manage to get up onto the top of a table, but not be able to put her hat on?"

Chachazero tilted her head back and forth in what he could only assume passed for a shrug. "Well, I can't use my arms. It's kind of hard to don a hat if you can't hold it."

"That said nothing about how you climbed the table!"

"Oh, that was easy. You should have guessed it yourself. All I did was… this!" And with that statement, Chachazero flung herself to the side.

Naruto made the sound tactical decision to screech and leap to the opposite side of the room.

"Ahaha, ahahaha! You're awfully fun to scare. Did you know that?" Chachazero asked while not trying to control her giggling at all. She again jerked to the side, but with his eyes now focused on her with the intensity of an Akamichi at a buffet he saw what she was actually doing.

Her head tilted to one side, and her hair snapped like a whip as she swung her head with enough force to drag her body several centimeters along with. Then, now lying on her side, she did the motion again, more clumsily. She moved six centimeters. Then another five centimeters. Maybe three that time, at most.

"You… you seriously…"

Naruto couldn't continue, because Chachazero had reached the edge of the table. And did not stop; no, she instead flung herself over the edge with one massive heave of her head…

And hung suspended from the table by her teeth.

"What."

Chachazero let go of the tabletop and dropped a short distance, only to bite the table leg again to stop her fall. Twice more she did this, until the doll was sitting on the floor, her hat still seated on her head. Looking down, he could see that another table leg had a number of bite-shaped indentations.

"What."

"Hm? Too amazed to say anything else? I don't blame you, I'm pretty amazing you know! So, now you know how I get around. Don't you feel happy?"

Naruto refused to answer that question.

She looked up at him with her head turned at an angle usually reserved for dead people. "Now pick me up again. I'm a high-class doll you know, I don't belong on the floor."

"Then why did you drop down there? You could have just told me." Although Naruto probably wouldn't have believed her. No, he definitely wouldn't have believed her if she told him something like that.

Despite his complaints, he still lifted her from the tatami mats to sit her on the table again. Her wooden body was inhuman enough that the contact didn't set spasms of revulsion down his arms.

"But that's just boring! I wanted to see what you'd do once you saw me move. I liked your reaction." Chachazero said as she looked at the corner Naruto had fled and clung to.

It was a sign of Naruto's great self-restraint that he didn't punt her across the room.

Instead he sighed and forced himself to look her in the eyes. Her soulless, malicious, freakish eyes. "Look, Chachazero…" he trailed off. Saying it was hard, and even more so to say it to her face.

His teeth ground together before he could force open his mouth to try again. "I'm sorry about earlier. When I stabbed you in the forehead. That was… sorry. I lost my temper."

"Oh?" Chachazero's eyelids lowered as her gaze raked over him, her mouth a thin line. "You are, are you? How sorry?"

"Very."

"Sorry enough to give me a knife?"

"No."

"Damn, I thought that'd work," Chachazero grumbled. But her serious face immediately disappeared as her eyes and mouth snapped back to their default position of homicidal joy. "Ah, well. That's fine, what's a little attempted murder between friends? You kicked a shard of ice into my face that one time, although this wasn't as impressive… I mean, your shuriken did go deeper and you got me dead-on, but a would-be fatal blow with a chunk of frozen water kicked up from the floor while you were tied up was much better. I give you an eight out of ten for execution, but a five for style."

Naruto's mouth gaped open in stunned disbelief. "You… You are… Chachazero, you're…"

'_Chachazero, you're fucking insane,_' the thought finished itself in his head, where the doll couldn't hear it. Probably.

"Yeah, I know what you mean. The word you're thinking of is 'magnanimous,' by the way." Naruto was absolutely certain that word had _nothing_ to do with what was going through his head as he stared at her.

"Well… thanks," he managed to reply. Crazy or not, being stabbed in the head was a pretty big thing to forgive. Naruto would have been more than happy to leave on that note, but he knew there was one more thing he had to talk about. He didn't want to think about what Chachazero would do if he didn't tell her about all the life-threatening news he'd learned since he left.

So he told her, the puppet sitting as eagerly as a child being read a story. Occasional giggles burst out at terribly inappropriate times, but otherwise he managed to describe everything with remarkably little interruption, considering who Chachazero was and what he had just compared her to.

Then again, a puppet as old as Chachazero must know a great deal about patience.

A swell of guilt rose as he recounted his encounter with Setsuna and the events afterwards. She had broken off the fighting first, but he had still been, well, a bit of an ass. And then she got injured on the roof because of him…

"Whew! That's quite a lot that's happened. You weren't gone that long, do you have crazy luck or something?" Chachazero wondered aloud as the ninja finished recalling the meeting of the 'Guardian Angels'. "Don't you have to set those traps up again?"

Naruto shook his head, having had the forethought to go back to the roof before going to his room. "No, I've already done that. I can prioritize, you know."

"Hmph. Well then, where are they?"

He pulled out a sheet of paper, a copy of the building map sketched onto it courtesy of Asuna. He used a kunai to make small stabs in it where he trapped the roof, seeing as how he didn't have a pencil.

'_Remember to keep writing tools on hand in the future_,' he told himself as he finished marking the map, setting the kunai on the table and map. "I've got them spread out over the roof, generally either at the edge of the roof or within the first two meters inwards. There are a few closer to the middle of the roof where I thought someone might likely walk if they didn't set off the traps by the edge."

Chachazero looked over it. "Well, I suppose that works for someone like you. You can't just carpet the entire roof with trap magic, and Negi Springfield needs to keep magic in reserve for later. Considering the materials you have, this is good enough."

Naruto sent her an obscene gesture for being so condescending, which she of course could not recognize, as it wasn't an Earthly insult. "Do you have any suggestions, then?"

"Ohohoho, so _now_ you want my help? Got any corpses for me?"

"Yeah, yours!"

Chachazero blinked under the heat of Naruto's glare. He didn't have time to play her games! He had wasted enough time as it was. His patrol hadn't started yet, but there had to be _something_ he could do!

"Hehehe," Of all things, she started to laugh. He didn't expect that. "Ahahaha! That's funny! Aheeheehee, heee, aha. I like that. I was going to help you anyways, but that's a really great answer! Hehehe, ahahah… I can't breathe…"

Naruto stared at her with a raised eyebrow.

"Well, I can't ever breathe, ehee, but if I could I wouldn't be able to right now." She explained as she brought her giggling under control. "Haaa… if I were made of flesh and blood, I really would have become a corpse, huh? You're pretty good!"

How is anything about that good? At all?

But still, he was surprised. "You… would have helped me anyways? I don't get it. Why?"

Chachazero cocked her head to the right, looking as puzzled as he felt. "What do you mean, 'why'? I don't have a reason not to, you know. It's pretty obvious you're going to be one of those people who are picky about what people they disembowel, so trying to blackmail you into murdering someone by holding back advice really won't do anything."

"Not that being choosy about whom you slaughter is a bad thing," Chachazero hastened to clarify. "I won't judge you. What happens in your butcher room is your own business. I have plenty of friends who only want to rip out the organs of certain people."

Naruto contemplated the merits and downsides of pouring bleach into his ears.

But the doll continued, blithely unaware of the struggle occurring in her new toy's head. Fortunately, this topic was less inducing of nausea in the soul. "And you're fun, so I'll just go ahead and lend you some advice. There's not a fancy reason for it. SO! My first suggestion is this: put on your normal clothes, or figure out how to carry your little arsenal of ninja stars in your kimono."

"That's—!" Naruto stopped and thought about she said for a moment. Through the horrified, disturbed gratitude, he tried to look at what she said objectively. "That's actually a good idea. I should have done that already, in fact."

"Yes, you should have."

He stood and grabbed his bag—the one that had his _shuriken_ and other weapons. Naruto would find a way to hide more of them on his person despite wearing a _yukata_. He'd just step out somewhere unseen to start working on that. Also, Chachazero was an idiot who didn't know what things were called.

"Hey, where're you going?"

"I'm not going to change in front of you!"

"I'm a doll!"

"So?!"

"… I can't argue against that."

Naruto could think of a dozen ways she could have argued against that, but was grateful she wasn't continuing. "I'll be back in a couple minutes," he said over his shoulder as he turned to the door.

Chachazero didn't respond.

*_k-k-k-k-k-k_*

The door was halfway open when he stopped. There was a clacking sound, like the slapping of wood on metal. "Hey, Chachazero, do you hear that?"

*_ k-k-k-k-k-k-chink—__**KCH-KCHTHUNK**_*

The sound changed, and Naruto immediately dove to the floor. A crunch like a tree snapping in half told him he made a good decision, and the shuriken that tore through the air where his spine had been and sunk halfway into the wall across the hall only reinforced that.

He flipped over and leapt backwards, tearing the weapon from the wall for his own use. "Wh-what the hell? What the hell was that?"

Chachazero looked at him with a confused expression. "Huh? I was giving you back your shuriken. You're welcome, no need to thank me!"

"To—to thank—" Naruto jabbed his hand at the damaged wall while he waved his weapon accusingly at the psychopath. "You just tried to kill me!"

"Pffft. What's a little attempted murder between friends? You did stab me in the head, remember? Besides, that wouldn't have killed you," Chachazero said with a knowing nod of her head, looking exactly as chipper and happy as she ever did. There was nothing to show how she attacked him. "I've met regenerators before, and a severed spine is just a very painful, paralyzing, and traumatic inconvenience."

Naruto's brow furrowed. It was true that he attacked her, but that was really messed up. "So you were trying to get back at me for earlier?"

"Eh? No no no, not at all! Well, maybe I did want to punish you a bit, but mostly it was just for fun."

He shook his head. Naruto needed alone time, or just not-psycho-puppet time. "Chachazero, you're fucking insane_."_

"Yep!"

Naruto left.

Locked in the bathroom, Naruto took a look at the clothing and weapons he had. No matter how he looked at it, the yukata was definitely the most appropriate clothing for walking around a ryokan, even if it didn't really have pockets. And he was only borrowing it, so he couldn't try to change it (if he even had the time to).

But the haori had them, didn't it? If he put the jacket-like cloth on over the yukata it would not only give him pockets, but put on a layer easier to remove or reach into than the yukata, but still covering enough that he could strap weapons on under it. He did have a number of leg and arm holsters from his scroll that he could store sharp metal objects in. Although he should still keep some under his yukata just in case…

Having an actual weapon pouch out would be pretty obvious, but if he kept it in his pocket he could strap it to his leg in only a couple seconds. It only took a little training to get used to drawing from the leg, and it kept the pouch out of easy arm's reach for an enemy that might grab it.

But that still left a lot of great stuff in his backpack. He didn't have the more practical-use sealing scrolls that would let him bring a wide variety of tools with him, so he was limited by what he could hide on his person. Perhaps he could bring his bag with him? Or would it get in the way?

Naruto stripped to begin arming himself, working from the feet upwards with each layer. His eyes crawled guiltily away from the sight of his skin as he worked, but he managed to complete the task anyways. But it set him to thinking about earlier again, despite his attempts to direct his attention elsewhere.

He hadn't been able to talk to Setsuna after the meeting. She had immediately left with Asuna, and Negi had told him that it would be best for him to rest after having just fought. Naruto thought that Setsuna was the one who needed to rest—he wasn't even tired—but apparently Negi's spell had also healed any exhaustion she may have felt.

It had occurred to him afterwards that he might have been able to get her attention while they were all together so they could speak later, but he had been… subdued. The affirmation of Setsuna's devotion to Konoka had only confused him more—why the distance between them?—but after his… revelation… in Kaede's room he hadn't felt able to bring any energy to bear until their discussion had neared its end.

Naruto shuddered. He didn't want to think about what it had meant, his inability to so much as brush against Kaede's shoulder. That couldn't be excused as an attempt on his part to keep her safe, not with the layers of clothing between them. It was just… him.

But, like a lifeline, Naruto clung to the rising memory of his fight against Setsuna. That contact hadn't bothered him at all. Well, he didn't appreciate being slammed into a boulder, but it had been so damned exciting that he didn't really mind that much. But then when she had touched his hand giving him back his kunai…

It had been a knee-jerk reaction, but he could have cut off one of her fingers. And as Negi said only a minute later, he couldn't reattach parts of people. But the sensation of another's hand against his had held the impact of being punched in the gut, and was about as nauseating.

How did that make any sense? Setsuna hadn't changed between their fight and their meeting. He hadn't—no, that wasn't true. But however disturbing his failure had been and whatever was wrong with him, his learning of it wouldn't make him different enough to suddenly change his mind about touch. Although he didn't know why he wasn't upset over it in the onsen in the first place.

Naruto's brow furrowed. Wasn't that the real issue here? Why hadn't he freaked out during their fight, or after? Or even right now, as the memory of it replayed within his head? He couldn't remember actually letting anyone touch him since he had left Konoha… not that there was a lot of contact at hand there for a demon child.

No… no, wait! Wasn't this just like back in Tanzaku? The gambling city had a large underworld and a lot of gangs, and hunting them down and attacking them had become a type of training (or maybe hobby?) for him. But most importantly, he had hit them. Kicked them, grabbed and threw them, and occasionally they had been good enough to repay the favor. There had certainly been some skin contact there—but to be honest, Naruto had never even thought about it until then.

And it didn't bother him at all. Just like with Setsuna… except his punching bags didn't stand nearly as positively in his thoughts than did the girl who'd ran away from her friend. And he certainly wasn't putting her on a pedestal after learning that.

It didn't take Naruto long to make the connection. It was as though he were instinctively drawn to the answer. "Fighting. The secret is fighting—the violence of it. If it hurts someone then it doesn't bother me," he whispered to his reflection in the mirror.

For a single blink he thought the eyes staring back at him had turned red, but his half-lunge at the glass surface to examine it with paranoid detail showed him that it was just a figment of his imagination. The tense knot in Naruto's shoulders eased slightly and he let out the breath that he hadn't been aware he was holding.

Now he wished he still didn't have an answer. He didn't like what this one said about him.

When Naruto returned to his room, he didn't notice anything strange. He had, after all, completely forgotten that he had left a kunai on the table. So it being gone didn't worry him at all.

* * *

><p>"Yue-chan. Yuueeeee-chaaaan. Yue-chan. Yue-chan? Oh good, I think she's asleep."<p>

Setsuna's stare betrayed her disbelief that anyone would intentionally do something so stupid. "And… and you felt you should test this by trying to wake her up?"

"W-well, she _is_ the only one that didn't get smashed," Asuna answered in her defense. "So she might wake up if something noisy happened. But now I know we can at least talk without waking her up."

"What would be wrong with whispering?"

"…" She didn't have an answer to that.

Setsuna shook her head. "I'll… I'll just go patrol the halls."

"Remember to come get me in an hour or two to switch out." Asuna did _not_ want to go hunting through the building for someone. Again. "Until then, I'll keep watch over Konoka."

The pale girl nodded. She may have looked a little grateful, but she hardly emoted at all. She might have just been annoyed. "Please don't do anything rash. Kagurazaka-san is a normal person, after all. Please get me if anything happens."

Setsuna strode to the door and bowed politely in farewell. Asuna had a feeling that 'politely' was a word that could be used to describe a lot of Setsuna's behavior. "I'll be going then."

The room was silent save for the sound of sleepy breathing as Asuna shook her head. "Wow. That Sakurazaki-san is a little uptight, isn't she?" she said to the sleeping Konoka. "I bet actually being around you, instead of stalking you, would have helped her relax."

Asuna sat down on the floor and settled in for a long stretch of boredom. At least when watching over Konoka, she didn't have to wonder about her wandering off. Negi, though… it was getting chilly outside. She hoped he'd dressed warmly.

Of course, that was the least important worry she had about him at the moment.

* * *

><p>A certain boy mage found his mood lifting as he headed up the steps outside the inn's main doors. True, they were still in danger, but with Setsuna on their side and the defenses they had prepared he was certain that they would stop the worst from happening.<p>

There was no one on the bridge leading into town and he couldn't see or feel anyone in the trees that bordered the ryokan. Negi ran a finger across the wooden surface of his staff, bolstering his confidence with its familiar texture before starting his patrol.

Well, perhaps he did take a moment to adjust the spells that kept him in more-than-ten-year-old physical condition. The night seemed to be a little colder than in Mahora, so adding a charm for warmth to the magic he wore all the time had been in order. Oh, he had certainly put on the haori overcoat for his yukata, and found that the ryokan also had a supply of loafers for people who didn't want to freeze their toes off in the sandal-like geta, but those did nothing to warm his legs or face.

"Alright… apart from that dirt path heading towards the forest, there were only a couple of places where someone would be able to sneak in without running into the flytraps."

Chamo nodded. "Which is why those are where we need to keep the closest watch. Yeah, I was there too, remember?"

"Sorry. I didn't remember when you regained consciousness."

He wasn't looking, but Negi could feel his familiar shaking his head from his perch on his shoulder. "You got to pay more attention to these things. And by these things, I mean me! But enough of that, there's more I have to tell you about the Pactio—specifically, how to use the Pactio cards."

"Use them?" One of their recent conversations tickled at his memory. "That's right, you did mention that there was more to the Pactio, back when you explained the contract to Naruto."

The ermine nodded. "Yep, that's what I'm coming around to. You already got a handle on using the contract to enhance your Ministra from that shindig with Evangeline-san, and we just covered the artifact—"

Negi coughed to interrupt his friend as politely as he could. "Actually, Chamo, you never actually said how to use the Pactio artifact." His eyes swept over the forest as they walked, but he only saw trees. More importantly, he couldn't feel any magic from the woods. Maybe he couldn't feel those talismans, but a mage was a different story.

"E-eh? I didn't? Sorry 'bout that. Alright then, I'll explain; firstly, _you_, the Magister, can't actually summon the artifact. That's something only a Ministra can do. This is because of the nature of the contract and the spirits of the Pactio."

"When the Pactio ritual starts it attracts vast numbers of all sorts of spirits of magic, even from great distances away. Spirits don't have the same physical restrictions as corporeal beings, so you can actually get them from anywhere in the world, no matter where you try to make the contract. Once gathered, they examine the potential Magister and Ministra as a single being, which requires a certain level of intimate contact."

Blood surged to Negi's cheeks. "The kiss…"

"Exactly. Then the most compatible spirits 'attach' themselves to the two. While you kissed, you and Ane-san were each filled with an identical spirit of magic, suited to the nature of 'Negi-Asuna', and creating the bond between you through their resonance with one another. There's a second part, though—the creation of the Pactio card, the proof of the contract between you two. The light of the ritual doesn't fade until the contract is completed."

Chamo pulled a cigarette out of his dimensional pocket and lit it with a word in the language of the faerie, which try as he might Negi could never hear properly nor repeat. Humans were not meant to. "The card holds yet another spirit, but the one inhabiting the Pactio card is that which most matches the Ministra, and the Ministra alone. That is the card you have—the real and original."

"But Asuna got a card, too. What's the difference between it and mine?" There didn't seem to be anyone coming this way either. Negi turned back and headed to the other side of the inn.

"Functionally, there isn't one. It's really a copy, filled with a lesser spirit used to channel the original from the card you keep on hand. It's to keep the original card safer by keeping it out of the line of fire, you see. You can only have a single copy exist at a time, but they're easy to make—so much so that often show up as a byproduct of a ritual with partners with a particularly strong resonance of soul or whose destinies are more entwined than usual, no effort needed on your part. That's why Ane-san has one already."

Negi was fascinated. "I had no idea that a probationary contract would be so complex. That's far beyond almost any other magical contract I've heard of."

Chamo chuckled. "That's not the _half_ of it! There's a lot more to the contract. Hmm… in hindsight, it might not have been such a good idea to convince you to focus your studies on magic you could control and leave everything involving the Pactio to me. There'd be no need to waste time explaining in that case."

Negi, who had no reason to use telepathy, obviously couldn't hear Chamo's accompanying thought. '_Although if you knew more about the system, you'd definitely be opposed to becoming the 'Thousand Harem Master'. Please stay ignorant for a little longer, Aniki! I'll make it up to you…_'

Negi shook his head. "No, that's fine. I could spend my entire life just learning new works of magic and still never come close to knowing everything about it, so I appreciate your help. But you still haven't said anything about the artifact."

"I was getting there! Be patient! Now, the card—"

Chamo stopped midsentence, freezing still on Negi's shoulder. "Chamo? What is it?" A thread of irrational fear ran down his throat and into his heart, and he reached up to his longtime friend to assure himself that he was still of fur and flesh.

He shook himself at Negi's touch as though ridding himself of water. "There's… something's wrong. The words are 'adeat' and 'abeat', Asuna will need those. Maybe very soon. Something _isn't right_."

Negi started to worry at the slight quiver that had entered Chamo's voice. He began to ask a question—but that quickly became entirely unnecessary.

The barrier around the ryokan rung like bells in Negi's head.

"Th-the wards! Chamo, you—"

"Yeah, I helped make the circle, I feel it too! But I feel like something's… never mind, just occupy them long enough for me to get Setsuna-nēsan!" With those parting words his familiar leapt off his shoulder, and Negi ran.

Sped by the wind, it took him only seconds to cross to the opposite side of the inn. Negi pulled his staff to his hand as he searched for the intruder that had crossed his barrier. There was a stretch of garden reaching out to the forest, paved paths winding around ponds, rock formations, flowers, and vibrant green plant life in a testament to the artistic talent of the ones who ran the ryokan.

But not a person. Or a demon. Or even so much as a frog. Unless the sorcerer had decided to make a fish shikigami, Negi couldn't find a single—

Stupid! Why did he think they would just be out in the open?

"Rastel maskil magister! _Tredecim spīritūs āēriāles…_" Negi began, incanting even as he felt out for magic not his own. '_There!_'

He swung around to aim his staff at the inn, or rather, at the huge and misshapen monkey silently trying to force open a window two stories above the ground. "_Vinculum factī inimīc_—ah!"

But his chant caught its attention. Negi only barely managed to scramble away before it smashed into the earth where he had stood. "F-fast!"

"Heh heh heh."

He hadn't seen the monkey shikigami that had invaded the changing room, but what stood in front of him matched the descriptions. If the monkeys had been three meters tall.

But even though its head was easily the size of the rest of its entire body and it looked like nothing so much as the stuffed animal of a giant, Negi could tell that it wasn't a shikigami. It _felt_ different.

"_Ēvocātiōnis valcyriarī, contubernālēs gladiātrīcēs. Age pungent!_"

Three colorless imitations of his body coalesced from the wind and charged towards the intruder's towering form. Wielding a flamberge each, two of the wind spirits swung at the monkey.

It moved more agilely than anything its size had any right to as it flipped away—but even then, Negi didn't see any sign of the paper-like movements or folds a shikigami would make. "Heh heh heh." Again came that hollow laugh, hidden behind the faceplate attached to the monkey's open, gaping mouth. White, blank, and expressionless, the utterly plain Noh mask said nothing about who it hid.

The evasion pulled it back across the barrier, setting the ringing off in Negi's head again.

The third of the warrior wind spirits leapt over its brethren with trident in hand. With a war cry like an angry storm it thrust its polearm down into the monkey's head. The tip tore through one of its giant ears—but no sooner had the spirit struck than the monkey's tail, growing like a cursed vine, pierced its chest in turn. The magic holding it together fell apart as it returned to the element that had birthed it.

Negi imagined that tail going through his own body and swallowed, his mouth and throat suddenly dry.

Moving in tandem, the twin sword-wielding spirits flanked the monkey. It showed no sign that it cared. "Heh heh heh."

Like it was mocking him. Or rather, like _she_ was mocking them—though muffled and husky, the voice sounded female. And the monkey's mouth was placed where a tall woman's head might be.

_She_ dropped to the ground at the thrust of the leftmost sword, and with a push of those handless arms kicked off the ground before the wavy blade from the right could reach her. Her tail knocked the follow-up swing aside as she kicked Negi's copy in the head, dispelling it.

The final spirit Negi had called forth couldn't hold against her on its own and fell after only two seconds. The woman in the monkey suit turned towards him, her empty mask sending a shiver down his back.

"Heh heh heh."

But he held his ground. After all, his spell had given him the opportunity to see what magic this mage used. It was the monkey suit—it had to be enchanted or animated somehow (he didn't feel that kind of magic, but he had already learned that he couldn't sense onmyōjutsu very well). She had learned to fight herself, or instilled the knowledge into the suit in some way.

It was certainly odd for a mage to get so close and personal in a fight, though.

She rushed him, faster than she had moved when she had fought the wind spirits. Surprised at the change, Negi tried to run to the side—but he didn't nearly match the agility of that monkey suit. That tail shot out towards his neck—

"Thanks for holding out for me."

—and was cut in half. The glint of moonlight on metal flashed, and the monkey woman got away with nothing more than a scratch that ran from the suit's lip to below her left eye. And sure enough, all that came out was stuffing—no blood, no reverting to paper.

The clatter of geta sandals on stone sounded as Setsuna landed beside him. She brought the hilt of her blade up to just below her neck, the weapon held forwards and parallel to the ground. "Are you alright, Negi-sensei?" she asked, not moving her eyes off of the giant monkey.

"Y-yes, she just leapt over the wards again when she pulled back. I'll be fine. I think there's someone in the monkey suit." Negi's free hand clutched at his head. She had pulled back to put quite some distance between them, but she had started stalking forwards again—which set the sound of bells tolling in his mind _again_.

"Heh heh heh."

"Good. This was one of the weak spots for your spell arrangement, but aren't there…?"

He realized what she meant immediately. "Yes, there are. Do you remember where?"

Setsuna nodded. They each started to move in opposite directions, moving slowly to keep from pushing the woman in the monkey suit into suddenly attacking. Setsuna carefully stepped over a small bridge over one of the ponds. Negi hung back by a meeting of flowerbeds.

"Rastel Maskil Magister! _Ēvocātiōnis valcyriarī …_"

Negi repeated his call for the wind valkyries, and the three of them exploded into motion.

The monkey woman immediately charged him, using the edges of the pools of water and the stones of the gardens for her effortless acrobatics, each of which inevitably tore apart at least one of his five copies without cutting into her momentum at all. Setsuna was only a pace behind her, her slashes repelled again and again by a regrown tail that seemed almost self-aware.

The monkey woman jumped to her right to avoid a sweeping blow from Setsuna and a pair of valkyries—a path that gave her a straight path to Negi. Five meters were covered in an instant, and her paw struck out for his face.

"Heh heh heh."

It was instinct that made Negi flinch from the blow. Even though she had just rushed into the flytrap spell, and even though he knew the spell about to activate could ensnare someone in under a microsecond…

Well, the rational mind doesn't have much involvement when it comes to objects speeding towards one's eyes

But as expected, she stopped. When he looked at her again she was fully bound, glowing ribbons wrapped tightly over and around her arms, legs, shoulders, and even her tail. Her head, too, could barely move.

He did it. He really did it! Laughter bubbled up from his still-racing heart, and Negi almost wanted to shout. He'd actually won, and not because of some last-minute stroke of luck as with Evangeline!

A moment later and Setsuna was beside him again. "Well done, Negi-sensei" she congratulated him. "But in the future, please don't be the one to draw the enemy's attention. You're still only a child, after all."

"Ah… oh. I see. I-I didn't mean to worry you."

Setsuna turned her eyes away from his dejected face. "No, I didn't mean… never mind. Let's see who our mystery attacker is."

She pulled forth an ofuda and held it ready as she pulled off the mask.

All the saw were two strips of paper attached to the inner back of the empty suit. One visibly glowed with magic that served no purpose other than to feel magical, and the other…

"Heh heh heh."

"Heh heh heh."

"Heh heh heh."

* * *

><p>The last monkey shikigami, folded within its target's clothing, crumbled into dust.<p>

* * *

><p>Konoka had strange dreams that night.<p>

It wasn't unusual for her mind to wander in unusual directions once she fell asleep. All manner of strange images or sounds or songs may appear, completely at random or sometimes in a comprehensible story.

For instance, she had once dreamt about a tree that was cutting off its own branches, and of a spider that tried to wrap a fox in its web. Another dream was of a little white bird trying to fly with a murder of crows, only to be pecked and chased away. She had once seen a knight who had to choose between saving a child or saving his queen, and who fell when he tried to do both.

Sometimes she woke up with eyes that were already red from tears, even though she hadn't seen anything sad. A child making a clock where the time was always yesterday shouldn't have left her pillow salty and wet.

Fortunately, most were just silly and weird.

Of course, Konoka didn't think about their oddity, having seen such sights often in her sleep. She was vaguely aware her dreams were different from other people's, but rarely paid much attention to that fact.

So it was, that night, that she had dreams that were very strange—or would have been to anyone who wasn't Konoka.

A stuffed teddy snuck into a hive of riled bees for honey. A man who never existed died and was replaced by himself. The white moon showed itself as black, and viciously tore into the dimmed sun.

A soft breeze blew past, but as monsters and mountains stood in its path it grew into a thunderous gale to cast them aside. The face in the mirror talked to the rumbling wall, while a cliché stock laugh track sounded in the background. A tarot card lay on a net, and soon the clouds rained cards rather than water.

One of them had her face, but as soon as she focused her attention on it the colors of the world blurred like mixing paint, and she was elsewhere, under a bright cerulean sky.

An angel held her in soft arms, and the earth sung to her as Konoka's chrysalis fell away. She and the angel played together, and it was some time before her dream moved on to show a sword waking from a nightmare. A book loses its pages, so it gets more paper.

Disembodied hands clasped together in prayer, blood seeping out between their fingers. No, it flowed out of the hands at such a rate that blood rushed down invisible arms in torrents like a red waterfall, covering them to the elbows before splashing onto the floor. Then the red spread, lifting into the air, washing away the blue sky to dye it a deep crimson. It wasn't the color of blood, no—it was a color that impossibly both redder than red and darker than black, and far more sinister than mere blood could be. As the last speck of blue faded away she felt herself being pulled into the sky. She fell upwards, screaming, into the—

Konoka woke up, breathing heavily. Her hair stuck to her sweaty forehead, and she had managed to tangle herself up in her blanket while she slept.

She was vaguely aware that she hadn't actually woken up because of the nightmare her dream had suddenly become. No, it was instead a sudden and urgent message from the bladder to the brain requesting clearance to unload its cargo.

"Mmummbrble, hmumble," she said with all the clarity of someone woken from a deep sleep. "Godda go t' bathroom…"

As luck would have it, she avoided stumbling over the for-some-reason-she-was-too-sleepy-to-think-about-still-awake Asuna. "Oh. Uh, sure then. "

It really was quite uncomfortable to respond when someone tells you something like that. That's what Konoka would have thought if she were conscious enough to think in full sentences.

She scuffled through the halls in her slippers and yukata, somehow managing to find the bathroom. Movements slow and clumsy by sleepiness, she pushed open the door and entered.

And suddenly paused. The moment she stepped past the doorframe, the need to pee had completely and instantly disappeared. So strange was the sensation that it jolted her awake. She would have spent more thought on feeling, but…

Cold, metallic claws clasped about her neck. Fur brushed against her as a tall form pressed her against the wall, light reflecting ominously from within its open mouth.

"Sorry. It's occupied."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note<strong>:

Any feedback on the chapter would be appreciated.

**Flamberge**: Also called the flammard, flambard, or flammenschwart, the flamberge is a sword with a wavy, undulating blade. The design is supposed to make swords that strike it vibrate more, making them harder to use. The wavy shape also gives it a wider profile without requiring more metal. It is used on both one-handed and two-handed swords, although it is more commonly found on the larger weapons.

**Ermine senses**: Chamo possesses the supernatural ability to detect potentially perverted situations within a certain distance of his body. This also has a broad range of other uses. Negi has never exactly figured this out, as Chamo has protected Negi from realizing the full extent of his perversion.

Bird and chick are obviously the well-known slang for girls (bird is British, and chick came from America… but I don't know if chick is also used in Britain or not. Most of you know this, again, but from according to the traffic tracking this story some of the readers are currently in non-English speaking countries and may speak it as a second language, so I felt I should explain), but the titmouse is a real bird that's actually only found in North America. Chamo should have more accurately said he was going to watch the **Japanese Tit**. Yes, that's the actual species name. Outside of America, most birds in the titmouse's family are called chickadees or tits.

**Honganji and Junsuibi Factions**: Although the manga is vastly superior to the anime, Negima's does have its uses—in this case, providing the name for the group showing up in this arc. The subtitles read 'Hoganji', but that was likely a misspelling as both I and Japanese-speaking beta are unable to find a meaning for it. 'Honganji' is more likely, referencing the Higashi Honganji Buddhist temple in Kyoto; however, the Honganji Faction was cast out of the temple and the faith by those Buddhists aware of magic. The Junsuibi Faction, on the other hand, is a creation of my own (the name (純粋日) meaning "Unblemished Sun"—"Honganji" references hongan, Amida Buddha's 18th promise and the basis of Pure Land Buddhism). No worries, I'm not flooding the arc with OCs. They're a background element, to eventually be elaborated upon in-story.

**Kuji-kiri**: The ku-ji ("nine syllables") are a mantra formed of nine characters (in Japan, this is almost always Rin, Hyo, Toh, Sha, Kai, Jin, Retsu, Zai, Zen. That Retsu leads me to assume 'syllables' means 'characters' in this case). These words are, individually, in a set, or as a whole, associated with any number of different subjects, from gods to the elements to the planets. Kuji-kiri (cutting the nine syllables, or nine symbolic cuts. Both work) is a form of warding aware something unpleasant: one traces out the kanji of what they want to avoid and a grid of nine lines over each other (whether 9 cuts are made of five lines vertical and four horizontal, or four horizontal and five vertical, depends on the specific tradition). One can draw this in the air using their hand, or take brush to paper to make a physical charm to carry around with them.  
>I had to wade through so much internet bullshit to get real information on this that my monitor now reeks of it.<p>

**Onmyōdō**: "The Way of Yin and Yang", it essentially refers to the Japanese magical tradition. In this story, the term has come to be the term under which all forms of Japanese magic is categorized. In real life, the onmyōji were said to have conducted divinations, were responsible for tracking the heavens and creating calendars, protecting homes and cities from evil spirits, experimented with alchemy, advised the nobility and Imperial Family, overlooked construction so that the building wasn't objectionable to those spirits nearby, conducted cleansing rituals, and spoke with spirits on behalf of the people. Onmyōdō was actually institutionalized by the Japanese government for a long period of time, before it was eventually discarded and relegated to superstition. A number of aspects of it had by this time been picked up by the Buddhist and Shinto faiths, however. My collection of onmyōjutsu is broader and more magical than reality offers up, however.

I refer to onmyō techniques as "onmyōjutsu" because the word "jutsu" refers to any technique or skill, and finds a lot of use outside of Naruto and other ninja stories (again, something many of you may already know). I haven't really discussed ofuda, but this is getting long… I'll bring it up next chapter.

"_**Junonēs, dētrahe foras cute et ossi ista quae dēbilitābat tuum corporem. Visceris Iterum Crēscēns."**_

_**"Oh juno, pull forth from skin and bone that which would cripple your body. Rebirth of the Flesh."**_

To explain the juno, one must explain the genius. The word "genius" originates from Latin, but it had a far different usage for the people of Rome. They believed that all people, places, objects, and even concepts held within them a spark of divinity, and each of these aspects of divinity is called a "genius", plural "genii". For a human, their genius was much like the soul, to which Romans attributed the talents and rational thought of human beings (although the genius wasn't the soul in the sense of continuing to the afterlife). The Romans had an interesting view of genius and object, viewing them as distinctly different yet intertwined. A man's genius may be very different from himself. If a person had skill or knowledge, or an object function or beauty, then that was viewed as a part of the person or object-but originating from the genius.

The genius of a woman was called the "juno" after the matron goddess of the same name. One would give worship to one's own genius, to that of the head of household and to the juno of his wife (reflecting the divine Jupiter/Juno pairing), and to the genius or genii of the family itself. There were also a number of genii known for their talent in a particular regard, such as health, learning, travel, protection, etc. The juno was most often given the stereotypical roles associated with women (childbirth, family, marriage, and so on). There were also a number of famous genii that were widely worshipped, such as the genius of the position of divine emperor "Genius Augustus" (the emperor himself was not considered a god, but the _position_ of emperor and his genius was); of concepts such as victory, health, or safety; that of Rome itself; or that of any of the various groups, guilds, villages, or even military units that people may be a part of. All of these were believed to have a divinity all their own.

Of course, in the modern age not everyone has their own genius-the belief in such things has vanished, and so they are much rarer. However, the type of magical spirit that could become a genius still exists, and can be invoked to temporarily serve as one. Indeed, this is the basis of the spell—while it is a common trait of genii to care for the safety of their other half, one must note that they originally were with someone from the day of their birth. By making that brief bond, the mage uses the symbolism of 'attaching at birth' to heal the subject (although, being both a temporary attachment and a stretch of common sense, it cannot heal major wounds). A ritual could be used to properly connect a genius to someone, if it was important enough to them. A number of the most significant old genii still exist, too strong to fade away with the passage of time. "Visceris Iterum Crescens" more closely translates to "the flesh is again being born" (there are a lot of words for "flesh", this one can also mean "newborn"), but as Akamatsu has taken liberties with the present participle I will as well. Direct translations rarely come out gracefully, in any case. Also, although Latin is sometimes written with j's, they are pronounced as i's. I's are pronounced as normal (the j was a late addition to the Latin alphabet).

"_**Ēvocātiōnis valcyriarī, contubernālēs gladiātrīcēs. Age pungent!"**_

"_**I call upon the Valkyries, sword wielding brothers in arms. Attack!"**_

Firstly, one must point out that the valkyries used here are not the valkyries of Norse mythology—Ken Akamatsu originally used 'valcyriarum', a singular gender-neutral word (I pluralized it), and while a word for 'valkyrie' doesn't actually exist in Latin, this and the lack of any other connection to the Norse figures suggests that they aren't the mythical valkyries. That's me pretty much telling you straight from the back of volume 3, but not everyone has the manga (and curiously, the original spell is missing from the otherwise-excellent Vetus site at Wordpress). The valkyries were psychopomps—figures in charge of the transition of souls from the death to the afterlife—whose purpose was to find worthy warriors amongst the dead and take them to Valhalla (they are also sometimes said to make the judgment of who lives and who dies in battle). There was a different afterlife for those who didn't make the cut, but that isn't for describing here.

The valkyries in HFAAA exist, but in the Christianization of the Norse the term was misapplied to a pugnacious form of wind spirit (which is also how the name became Latinized), an error which wasn't corrected for a number of centuries. This spell summons and directs such spirits, who take on the form of their summoner (having a fondness for the humanoid form). They may appear wielding an imitation of any weapon to have ever been swung or shot through the air, thought it is composed of condensed wind and thus may lack certain properties of the original. The literal translation of the spell is horrible. I can't repeat this enough—unless you have a good reason for every word to match up as closely as possible, regardless of how mangled the sentence in English is—do not literally translate another language's sentences.

'Gladiatrix' (the c replaces x when declined) is a feminization of the Latin word 'gladiator' following the more common pattern for converting a –tor noun to the feminine (the term for 'comrade' happens to be female, regardless of the comrades in question). It actually means 'gladiator' and originated from 'gladius', the most famous Roman sword and the word for swords in general, which is why Akamatsu could use it as an adjective. To reiterate, this isn't bad translating on his part (although he was going from Latin to Japanese, which is very different than from Latin to the linguistically-connected English), but rather he understood that words can arrange in another language in a way that would make no sense with a straightforward translation. There isn't actually a Latin word for 'swordsman'.


	16. Venari Strigas

I don't own Naruto or Negima.

A quick reminder; the Kansai dialect uses "-han" in place of "-san".

This chapter would like to remind you that Happy Families Are All Alike is indeed rated M. Just a notice to those of you who have issues with violence, blood, or Tsukuyomi.

It would also like to remind you that my scenes are too damn long—I had to cut the chapter in half _again_, and that's after shortening the fight scenes by a third.

Thanks to Vandenbz and Ebony Scales for their help with the chapter.

The title is from the song of the same name by Yuki Kajiura, made for the anime _Puella Magi Madoka Magica_. It means "Witch Hunt" in Latin, and I suggest listening it to once things get moving.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 16:<strong>

**Venari Strigas**

Negi gaped in shock at the empty _thing_ bound before them. Even its insides looked like a Disneyland costume, but the breathing heaves and undulations of the fabric showed it to be unmistakably alive.

It was no mere enchanted costume or shikigami. It had to be one of the talisman master's demons. A cold dread washed over him. "S-Setsuna—"

He spoke to empty air. She was already sprinting for the inn.

Setsuna slammed the door open, with Negi right behind her as she bounded up the stairs with complete disregard for the number of steps it held.

"Kagurazaki-san! Is—"

Asuna stood outside the restroom with her lip caught between her teeth, accompanied by Yue (who was bashing her head against the door for reasons Negi probably wouldn't enjoy hearing).

"Come on, please get out! I really need to go! K-Konoka!" Every word was punctuated with another thud.

"It's occupied~"

"You can't keep saying that! I'm dying! I am literally dying! I am about to drop dead on the spot, and only the toilet can save me!"

"It's occupied~"

Yue moaned in despair and sagged against the door.

"Well, that's how it is. She's been in there for… well, too long. I'm sort of worried. I've tried talking to her, but she just keeps repeating herself." Asuna tried to look at them as she talked, but her eyes kept sliding towards the door.

Repeating. The monkey suit's laughter was always repeating. Negi's eyes widened as he realized just what their intruder had done.

"Konoka-ojōsama, are you alright?" The worry laced through her voice betrayed her growing suspicion.

"It's occupied~"

"… That wasn't what Sakurazaki-san asked."

"It's occupied~"

"You're so cruel! Just let me in!"

"I'm sorry, but I must make sure you're unharmed. Please forgive my rudeness, Ojō-sama!"

And then they were too far away for him to hear more, as he was halfway to the building's exit.

It was reckless, he acknowledged. But realizing that Konoka—who he'd lived with for months and who had a heart that put mere gold to shame—had been kidnapped was too much for him. He already knew she wasn't in the bathroom. A demon with that sort of skill wouldn't make all those unnecessary movements, movements that sent it back and forth across his barrier and set his alarm sounding ceaselessly in his head.

So much so that he wouldn't notice it ringing for a separate intruder.

Unbidden, the wind he always held with him blew open the doors before he reached them to let him run outside without pause. He stopped at the edge of his barrier to search for the presence of unfamiliar magic. If she had headed into the woods instead of the city it would be almost impossible to follow her.

Or she could be… above him? Negi looked up just in time to scream and dive to his right. As such, he managed to keep his brains inside his head as something big and furry crashed into the ground where he had stood. Cracks marred the pavement where it landed.

Negi scrambled to his feet as it approached him. No—her. Another animal suit stood before him, this one in the shape of a bear, although with all the distorted proportions of the other. In its open mouth was a face he could hardly make out, although her large and round spectacles shone white under the moon.

And in her arms was an unmoving Konoka.

"Y-you—!" Anger bubbled up from his chest, and he wanted to scream at this woman and vilify her for what she had done. But the sight of Konoka lying motionless in her arms, her head flopped back and hair hanging towards the ground, froze his tongue in renewed fear.

His hands shook as his eyes ran over her. Was that movement her breath, or just the bear woman jostling her? Was she limp because she was unconscious, or—

"Heh heh heh… you didn't do too badly, little wizard," came a husky, mocking voice from inside the suit. "But it seems you're cuter than you are talented." The onmyōji stepped towards him.

And activated one of his flytrap spells.

He stared with stunned eyes, not having realized that he had leapt over his own trap. But the sound of Konoka dropping to the ground pushed him to move and it took him only a moment to cast a repurposed divination spell. Checking Konoka's immediate health was infinitely more reliable than his earlier attempt at fortune-telling, and Negi released a sigh of relief when he saw she had only been forced into an enchanted sleep.

The one who had worked that magic was right there beside him, and with his driving worry out of the way it occurred to him that he should apply some more layers of flytrap spells to keep her in place until the others got here. He rose to face her.

The empty bear suit stood still under the binding straps of the spell, but its head had fallen off. The freed sorceress stood beside it with a smirk on her face and an ofuda held in between two fingers. It was no wonder no one had noticed her enter the building—she wore the inn's uniform! Black stockings rose up her legs to stop just a short distance past her knee, letting a small band of skin show before it was covered by the hem of her dark skirt. Her shirt was a dark blue, but the white apron she wore over it all made the small amount of dark colors that showed through stand out by contrast.

"Yuuki, I'll be needing your help again." Her dark eyes were sharp and held a cruelty that Negi couldn't allow Konoka to be subject to.

"Rastel Maskil Magister…"

The ofuda clung in the air to something that wasn't there before being subsumed into the body of the monkey suit that manifested around her.

A paw struck him in the chest mid-incantation, tossing him against the trunk of a tree. She ripped his staff from his loosened grip.

"I'll be taking this. Children shouldn't play at being adults."

"My staff!" Her tail pulled it away from him before he could grab it, and Konoka was again in her arms.

He grit his teeth as he pulled out one of his wands, tipped with a miniature replica of Jupiter. "Flans—wah!"

His incantation was once more broken when a dozen hairs on her suit transformed into monkeys and dragged him to the ground.

"Heh heh heh… it's been fun, my cute little wizard." The bear woman (monkey woman?) hopped away from him to avoid any of his other traps—just in time, as a rain of kunai and shuriken stabbed into the ground where she had stood. A second volley struck the ground around Negi to slice up the monkey shikigami.

"There she is!" The sound of splintering wood followed Asuna's voice.

"And that would be my cue to leave."

With a parting laugh the monkey woman turned tail and darted away.

"Negi! Are you alright?" Asuna's concerned face stared into his as she pulled him up. Dust, splinters, and chunks of wood littered her hair and shirt. The monkeys attacking him were reduced to crumpled balls of paper at her feet.

"It's nothing, but she stole my staff—"

Naruto landed beside them with Chamo in hand, who was quick to leap to his master's shoulder. "If that's the case then we'll just take it back. But we have to move!"

So they did.

Their brief pause had given Setsuna a two meter head start on them, but they managed to draw unevenly nearer to her. The monkey woman took a beeline towards the city, and the four of them chased her over the bridge leading to it.

Negi thrust his wand forwards and drew upon all the power remaining from his last use of the activation key. "_Mea virga_!"

The staff jerked in the suit's tailhold to point towards him. He felt a rush as though victory had already come—he could easily catch her in the air!

But the suit's grip on it was strong, and it stayed in her grasp long enough for her to reach around and slap paper onto his staff—which dropped as though it was nothing more than a stick.

"What? You can't do that!" Indignation burned like coals alongside his anger at the kidnapping. But sealing his staff's magic had slowed her enough for them to shrink the distance between them.

Gravel crunched under their feet as they tore down the road, but whatever demon formed that suit was fast. However hard they pushed themselves along the path down to Kyoto they could draw no closer to her after that.

"I swear, if you've hurt Ojō-sama—"

"She's fine!" Negi called out from behind her to assuage Setsuna's worries. "The talisman master just put her to sleep."

"That's the only positive thing that's happened since Chachazero tried to stab me," Naruto responded. Negi tried not to think about that. His friend pulled his backpack off his right shoulder before slinging it over his left. Somehow this filled his hands with shuriken. "But let's see if we can add to that."

Naruto's arms blurred—but as the deadly projectiles neared her, the suit's tail spun and lashed about, using his staff to knock the blades away with a sound not unlike the clash of metal on metal.

"That is so fucking cheating! She couldn't even see them!"

"The suit she's wearing is her demon." Setsuna didn't take her eyes off the woman as she spoke. "And there's no way to know how it senses."

"W-w-wearing a demon?!"

Naruto stumbled over his feet, barely regaining his balance after he and Asuna had passed him. "That's insane! She's—Asuna, why are you covered in chunks of wood?"

"Rastel Maskil Magister! _Ūndecim spīritūs āeriālēs, vinculum factī inimīcum captent! Sagitta Magica, āēr captūrae!_"

"The door was held shut with one of those seals. So I kinda borrowed your method of walking through walls." Negi would have paid dearly to have been part of whatever conversation that had been.

Eleven arrows of wind launched forth from the air around his wand. The monkey women must have sensed them, as she grabbed the pole of a streetlight to make a sharp ninety degree turn into the train station at the bottom of the path.

She must not have known how the Magic Archer spell worked, and Negi grinned as the arrows unerringly followed her into the building. But as the four of them rushed into the building they were met by eleven tiny monkeys blurred inside chains of air.

Setsuna growled at mockingly evasive onmyōji. "She's trying to escape by train!" She was the first to vault over the laughable barrier that was the ticket gate, none of them dropping pace in their race to the train.

"She's in a freaking monkey costume carrying an unconscious girl! Who would let someone that sketchy on board?" Asuna asked. "Wait—why isn't there anyone here? I know it's late, but a station's never _empty_!"

"I've seen seven talismans so far that would keep ordinary people from even thinking about entering. She must have intended to flee this way from the start."

One turn later and the trains came into view for just a brief moment. A brief moment, because no sooner had they rounded the corner than did a wave-like ripple roll through the ground before them, lifting and cracked the floor into an uneven mess—and worse, black smoke rose up from the split open ground to shroud their vision.

Negi ran easily over the surface, his body already lightened by the same magic that let him run alongside his friends, but the others weren't so lucky. He heard rock grinding against rock and the sound of somebody falling to the ground with a curse, their footing lost on the treacherous floor.

Negi and Setsuna emerged out of the cloud only in time to see the talisman master slip into the train, even though her costume's comically large head barely fit through the door. She turned around to send them a cheery smile and a wave as the doors closed upon her entry. "Sorry, but it's good-bye for now. Nice try, children!"

As the woman had no doubt planned, the train lurched into motion the moment she finished. She continued to wave as the vehicle began to leave, taking some smug joy from watching them futilely running towards her before turning away. The bitter swell of frustration and failure rose in Negi's gut.

And then Setsuna was next to the train.

"Didn't I say it before? I'll never let you take her!" With the screech of metal carving metal she split open the side of the cabin. Broad metal siding crashed to the ground as Setsuna leapt into the hole.

"Come on, hurry!"

Negi felt an arm wrap around his back. "Sure thing—just hold on, Negi!"

"To whaAAAAH!" he screamed as Asuna jumped aboard the moving train with him in hand, both of them collapsing to the floor from the perpendicular shift in momentum.

Negi groaned and rubbed at his head. "I could have gotten on myself, you know. But at least we're all—wait! Naruto-kun!"

A look through the gaping hole in the wall showed that they had just left the station, and they were starting to pick up steam. He leaned his head out of it to ensure that Naruto was alright.

Said ninja was clinging to the side of the train. The wind pushed his hair completely flat and his clothes lashed about, his face rippling from the force of the air. Naruto moved forwards, but against the lashing wind he moved slowly.

"Asuna-san, help me pull Naruto-kun into the car. He'll tear his hands open on the edge of the hole like this!"

The green- and blue-eyed girl nodded and grabbed his arm with one hand and a hanging strap with her other. Negi leaned out of the train and reached his hand out towards Naruto. "Need some help?" he shouted. The air the train rushed past, pushed him backwards with fearful force, and he was suddenly very glad he had thought to ask for Asuna's help.

"Thanks," Naruto shouted back. The wind was so loud he could hardly hear him, but Negi got the message when the other boy held out his backpack.

That hang-up over being touched would get him hurt one day. Negi grabbed Naruto's bag and called out for Asuna to pull them in. One Asuna-strength heave later and they were piled on the floor of train—well, he and Asuna were. Naruto had twisted to his feet before he would have landed on them.

Setsuna turned from her study of the railway map at the front of the car. "If you need a moment to prepare, this would be the time. She's confined to the train until it stops, so we aren't in danger of losing her anymore. But we still don't have much time."

"I'm good to go. I may have thrown a few, but I still have a lot more pointy things left."

Negi helped Asuna to her feet after rising himself. "I think we're ready, too. I don't have much to offer in the way of support or augmentation magic. Do you know where she's taking Konoka?"

Setsuna's hair hid her pale face as she turned her head away in shame. "No. I don't. She can't bring Konoka-ojōsama to the Kansai Magic Association itself or she would face something much more frightening than just us, but I couldn't guess where she would go instead."

Even if she were up to date on Kansai politics it was doubtful that she would have known, but Setsuna silently berated herself for not keeping track of it all the same.

Asuna harrumphed and crossed her arms. "Well, the answer to that's pretty easy then. We just don't let her go, right?"

"O-oh." The straightforward answer bulldozed over any fears of failure, and it occurred to her that Asuna might not be worried that they would lose Ojō-sama at all. That all she felt was resolve to bring her back. Setsuna felt her lips crease into a smile. "Yes, that's exactly it, Kagurazaki-san."

Two train cars closer to the front they found the witch, still dressed in her demon clothing and with the unconscious princess slung over her back.

"You again? And here I thought we already broke up—stalking is a crime, you know!" the onmyōji taunted as a full score of monkeys manifested from her suit.

"You're just throwing your shikigami away." She cut through them without effort as bolts of light that coursed past her to destroy those her first swing hadn't exorcised. "Those aren't enough to stop us!"

The monkey woman paused at the entryway of the next cabin. "True… but there's no need for them to stop you when slowing you down works as well. Ofuda-han, Ofuda-han, call forth the tides to save us from our irate enemies!"

Her body reacted to the danger as soon as the psycho started chanting. She swung upwards and cleaved through the talisman that had been pasted to the underside of the luggage rack. But her quick response wasn't enough, and dread flushed down her at the sight of the woman's smirk.

The three other talismans in the cabin briefly shone with light before a torrent of water smashed Setsuna into the ceiling.

The cabin _roared_ with the crash of water against its sides. The shouts of the others were just dim sounds over the deafening rush filling her ears as she dropped. Setsuna fell onto the backs of the seats below, her body bent backwards over them for only a single second before the water dragged her off and knocked her into Negi.

Setsuna struggled to keep hold of her sword and slow herself. The car filled to the brim in moments, but the seals continued to produce a current that bashed everyone around the car. Only Asuna managed to wedge herself between the seats—grabbing a chair while moving underwater at their speed was unreasonably difficult.

Naruto clung to a window, but the water pressure sealed it shut. Fire burnt in her chest as her lungs used up the last of her oxygen, and the mindless thrashing of drowning youths filled the cabin. The familiarity of the feeling sent new waves of panic through her that she wasn't able to answer.

She couldn't swing her sword with any force in the water. Had she been better, had she devoted more time to training, she could have broken them out immediately, but now, with this failure… but now Ojō-sama…

"Do try not to drown… I'd feel terrible if I killed a bunch of kids, you know? Sorry, but my stop's arrived. So we'll take our leave now. Ta ta!"

The voice was distorted through the water, and the monkey woman's shape was deformed equally so. But Setsuna could still see her walking away. And she could still see Konoka-ojōsama, and the paper talisman now attached to the unconscious girl's forehead.

* * *

><p>"<em>Kono-chan! Take my hand!"<em>

…

"_S-Set-ch—"a flurry of bubbles stole her words away as her head dropped under the water._

…

_Setsuna screamed as the icy liquid surrounded her, losing air and filling her mouth and throat with river water. Unthinking terror stole over her as oxygen fled and she frantically grabbed for anything, for everything, that could possibly save her._

…

_They sank deeper, and Setsuna's last sight before the light faded from her eyes was Kono-chan's face, as still and cold as death._

* * *

><p>'<em>No! Never again!<em>'

The word was all but illegible under the water, but Setsuna nonetheless screamed it with all the fury the day had brought her.

"_**ZANKŪSEN!**_"

Her enraged defiance gave her clarity, and with a focus more intense than she had ever before achieved Setsuna struck through the churning water. Water rippled as a thin chi-born vacuum sliced out in the wake of her stroke.

Then it ripped the train open.

Had the train not already stopped, they might have died in the explosive torrent of escaping water, so great was its force. Like wave bursting out of the ocean the water surged out of the train car, tossing their group out onto the cement and smashing the monkey woman into the ground.

Setsuna spat out the salty water to swallow desperate lungfuls of oxygen. Water still flowed over the ground, but with the initial wave finished such a small amount did nothing to move her.

She gasped for more air as she glared at the kidnapper. Her demon suit had pulled her to her feet already, and she once more took hold of Ojō-sama. Setsuna scowled with sword in hand. "Did you see that, monkey woman? If you don't want me to repeat it on your neck, you'd best return Konoka-ojōsama!"

The onmyōji didn't answer until she lifted her captive, the ofuda still affixed to her face below her hairline. "With your strength, I wouldn't want you after my head… but Konoka-ōjosama is something I will never part with."

'_Something?_' Setsuna gnashed her teeth together at the woman's objectification of Ojō-sama.

"What did you say!?"

The face in the monkey suit's smirk was all Asuna received in response. The water splashed as she took off once again.

Setsuna finally rose to her feet, her lungs protesting against the movement. She told them to shut up, and once more began the chase. The sound of splashing water reassured her that she was not alone.

That thought gave her pause. She quickly shook it away.

"Setsuna-san, what did that monkey woman mean?" Negi asked from behind her.

"She called Konoka 'Ōjo-sama'! What's up with that? Come to think of it, she didn't even try to take Negi's letter from us!" Asuna this time, her twintails no longer recognizable as such with her wet hair splayed apart and clinging to her.

Negi chimed in. "And she didn't touch anyone else—just Konoka-san. Again! What's happening?"

More monkey shikigami leapt away from the retreating kidnapper; Setsuna relished the brief delay that prevented her from having to explain. Still, it slowed the three of them enough for the costumed lady to gain some distance, and Setsuna had no more excuses for remaining silent.

"You know that Konoka-ojōsama is from a magical family, yes?" At their acknowledgement she continued, despite how uncomfortable it made her to reveal something so private. "When onmyōdo began to decline in influence in the imperial court, several families—including the Konoe—began a long-term project in order to breed the ideal mage. Konoka is the culmination of those hundreds of years of carefully arranged marriages that composed the breeding program. It's only thanks to the Elders' efforts that she's been permitted a normal life until now."

"_B-breeding program?_" Negi repeated in a tone like spiders falling out of his mouth. She could tell he had more to ask, but they had reached the stairway leading out of Kyoto Station and the question was left to die away.

It was as massive as one might expect of the entrance into the primary train station of the former capital of Japan, the immense and sprawling monument to the modern side of the historical city. The stairs were easily a dozen meters wide, with a narrow strip of staggered rails bisecting the steps into two lanes.

And 'lanes' was an appropriate term, as the path looked more like two wide streets broken up into layers. Lights shone along each side and was reflected off the glass paneling to illuminate the darkness—not that the veritable glow of the city's nightlife hadn't done that already. Despite the shallow incline the staircase still reached up to several times Setsuna's size. Such was its size that each dozen steps widened out into a brief plateau, and she counted ten such surfaces before abandoning the attempt to focus on _her_.

Several layers above them, an empty monkey suit sat splayed out on the ground. Konoka leaned against it at a haphazard angle, her head slumped forwards to allow the strip of paper on her forehead to coil on the stairs. And sneering down at the three would-be rescuers was the onmyōji herself.

She wore the blue-and-white uniform of their hotel with the white apron that reached down past her knees, clad in black stockings; hair like a crow's feathers flowed down to her skirt and shifted as though in a breeze despite the lack of wind. Rather than accenting her beauty, it only emphasized her sharp features to give her face an almost predatory cast.

"Heh heh heh… I'm impressed! I truly am, and Amagasaki Chigusa isn't one to give praise lightly." Her eyes narrowed. "But I'm afraid I can't afford to play games any longer. This is the end."

Setsuna leapt up at her, tossing Yūnagi's sheath aside to swing the sword with both hands. "As though I'd let it stop here!"

"As I thought… Ofuda-han, oh great Ofuda-han! Reduce all mankind to ashes: Kyōraku Daimonji-yaki!"

A roar ripped through the air, the challenging cry of the inferno that poured screaming from the paper seal in the kidnapper's hand. The cracking of paved steps under the terrible heat burst into the quiet night like staccato gunshots. And she was diving headfirst into it.

"Look out!"

Asuna grabbed her yukata half a moment before Setsuna's arc through the air would have sent her into the flames. She screamed along with her rescuer as they fell down the stairs, tumbling to a stop on one of plateaus between inclines.

"Rastel Maskil Magister!"

"K-Kagurazaka-san? You… thank you."

* * *

><p>Chigusa shook her head. "Tsk… I thought that would have finished off at least the Shinmei girl." It would have been too much to hope for her ofuda to have gotten rid of these persistent children so easily.<p>

"You really shouldn't have kept following me. You've brought this upon yourselves, you know." If they couldn't be scared off and were good enough to avoid her previous traps… well, she had considered that she might be seen by such a person.

"_Flet, ūnā vente…_"

She pulled forth the final spell this night would need. A pulse of light shone for a brief moment before her ofuda crumbled into dust. But her smug smile faded quickly. The other four ofuda hadn't responded to her activation spell.

She stared daggers at the brats below her, who were very much _not_ collapsing into thought-eating comas. What had they done?

So she'd have to take harsher action… well, that was of no consequence compared to the value of the Konoe ōjo-sama. "Yuuki, rise! Enki, return to my side!" At least the damnable Easterners were held down behind her barricade of fire.

Another ofuda fell apart, and with a puff of smoke the familiar ursine outline of Enki materialized beside her, as Yuuki rose up from his seated position. "De—"

"_Flāns Saltātiō Pulverea!_"

Chigusa had a moment to sneer at the boy—a mere child!—as he completed his incantation. And then the wind screamed to life.

From the small mage's wand erupted a flood of howling wind so large and so violent that it visibly distorted the air. The onmyōji screeched as the wall of wind crashed into her and flung her head over heels into a wall.

Her barrier had hardly slowed it at all.

She lay, stunned, as something large and flat slammed into the ground beside her. The crunching sound forced Chigusa's thoughts into movement again, only barely in time to banish the object before it fell over onto her. It was a sign. A sign bigger than her entire body, and as thick.

Chigusa stared incredulously at the bent object, once held up over the walkway by large signposts. Those metal pillars were now bent over to hug the ground. The sound of metal on concrete scraped through the large and empty space as the broken and twisted handrails, completely uprooted from the ground, began to crash their way back down the stairs.

And her fire was _gone_. Her magically fueled grand pyre, of such size that any wind should have only fed its flames, had been blasted down with enough force to smother it completely. Yet despite that devastation, neither the bell girl, Ōjo-sama, nor the Shinmei swordsman had been thrown as had she.

The bespectacled freak of magic glared at her, not looking away as he swung his wand to his companion. "_Sīs mea pars per centum octōgintā secundās! Ministra Negiī, Cagurazaka Asuna!_"

"Ane-san, this would be a good time to use that artifact of yours."

"The activation phrase to summon it is '_adeat_'!"

"O-Oh? Right, here goes nothing. _Adeat!_" Card in hand, the redheaded girl repeated the word of power. The card disappeared into the length of light she called forth.

"Sweet! This is the most awesome fan I've… ever… ever… fan? _What the _fuck_, Negi!?_"

Whatever she meant to do, conjuring a giant paper fan obviously wasn't it.

A fistful of ofuda burnt to ash as Chigusa finished layering protective magic over her demons, and returning her own protections to full strength. No, even more than that—she had placed a third layer over the shield in response to that kid's ridiculous amount of magic. That Ōjo-sama would have power greater than that made her giddy with anticipation.

Their pause had been too easy to take advantage of. But then again, they were still children. "Enki and Yuuki, tear them apart!"

Her Zenki and Goki, only barely moved by the gale, burst into motion at her command; but her opponents weren't quite foolish enough to wait for her to make their move. The two girls had already begun their charge.

She mentally commanded Ōjo-sama to return to her, and a red letter briefly glowed from the meter-long strip of paper on her head. Konoka's body floated to Chigusa's side.

She held the girl's head in a grip that would have been painful had she been awake. Using Ōjo-sama's power would be enough to destroy all three of them. "Allow me to give you a taste of the power I am soon to—"

Wait. Hadn't there been four brats?

It was only by luck that she noticed the almost-invisible strand of metal. She stumbled back and nearly fell as a noose of thin wire snapped taut in a loud twang. Her throat had only just left that space. If she hadn't moved, it would have taken her head.

The rasping of metal bit into her ears as her eyes followed the retracting wire up the wall behind her.

The blond boy clung to the wall like a demented spider, the lights only illuminating half of his body. The rest was garbed in shadow, with nearly his entire face obscured. The air surrounding him _vibrated_ with bloodlust, and Chigusa found herself pierced in place by red eyes that all but glowed in the darkness.

"You're the one… _you're_ the one who violated Makie and Ayaka. You poisoned Mana!" the too-young teacher snarled. His voice was thick with dripping hatred. Chigusa's heart began to race at the unfamiliar, almost painful, experience of being the target of genuine and deep-seated loathing.

Nonetheless, she wasn't one to still her tongue in the face of danger. "Poison… heh heh heh, so there really was one of those beasts with you. I had thought the cursed poison I brewed for Tsukuyomi was an unnecessary precaution. Tell me, is she dead yet?"

"Shut up! What did you use? How do we help her?"

She sighed. "Do you always try to kill people before asking for their help? You're a bit slow, aren't you? Why would I ever tell you how to cure someone I just poisoned?"

"Then I'll take the antidote from you once I've torn off your limbs!"

He lunged down before she could respond. Chigusa couldn't act at that speed and was only able to stare at the kunai he thrust towards her eye.

Fortunately, she didn't need to act at all.

Something fast and red and _large_ burst out of the wall like a train through rice paper. It crashed into the little monster, hurling the two to the opposite side of the stairwell.

Chigusa still didn't move, belated terror boiling through her as she stared at the dagger hanging in midair, supported by the bottommost layer of the barrier it had pierced.

* * *

><p>'<em>Where the hell is Naruto?<em>'

A ninja would be pretty handy at the moment!

"Am I supposed to thwap you to death or something?" Asuna leapt up the last set of stairs to the weird bear, bringing the big stupid fan down onto its furry head (a fan! What happened to that awesome sword on the card?). Or she tried to.

Its huge arms grabbed her artifact in its claws. The bear spun, and her grip on the harisen pulled her with when Enki tossed her into the wall with a snarl that would put any real bear to shame.

Its mouth didn't move at all despite its furious bellowing. Asuna didn't know why that was so unnerving.

She groaned at the surprisingly dull pain of the impact as she forced herself to her feet. It was fast! And those claws… Asuna shuddered at the thought of one of them actually cutting her. Although from the look of it, 'ripping' would be more accurate.

"What the hell did you do to the giant teddy bear?"

They weren't the natural claws of any animal, let alone a bear. No, it was more like the crazy lady had shoved arrows through the demon's paws—she could even see the shaft and fletching sticking out of the back of its paws, and stuffing peeked out where claw met fake fur. The arrowheads weren't clean or sleek at all, looking instead like rusty, jagged chunks of metal stuck on a stick.

There was no blood to accompany the damage, but that only made it seen even more unnatural.

Behind Enki she could see Setsuna, the monkey fading into nothingness behind her. Something red hurled past the swordsman and crunched into the opposing wall.

It was time for Asuna to do her part, now.

She pushed off the wall to bash the demons head in, her body lighter, faster, and stronger than she had ever felt before. Again and again she swung her weapon, as fast as she possibly could even if she couldn't get any good force behind it; she couldn't let the bear catch her again! And she didn't actually know how to defend herself if it tried to counterattack.

But seriously, she was so freaking fast! She felt like she could outrun a motorbike!

Even so, every swipe was countered by the bear despite its huge head getting in the way. Enki knocked aside every blow with those monstrous talons, bestial sounds rumbling forth as it strove to keep her back. But even though she was using a fan made of freaking _paper_, it never damaged the harisen at all, and no matter how hard she swung her artifact it barely bent at all.

Maybe a fan didn't suck that much after all.

The observation was a mistake. The demon took advantage of her distraction and stepped into her reach to grab her artifact just inches above her own grip. The other claw struck out at her head.

Her reflexive jerk back saved her face, and Enki's arrow-claws only skidded along her cheek. But instead of the expected pain of a ripped face, if felt more like she got a shallow cut.

Magic was a wonderful thing.

* * *

><p>Something burst out from beneath Naruto to send the two crashing across the entire distance to the opposite wall—and through it. The bear—likely the Zenki—blocked Asuna's fan and flung her against the wall. Only Setsuna broke through, the monkey lady's monkey cut in half.<p>

Yet even when Chigusa shook herself out of her horrified observation of Naruto's kunai she didn't spare a moment to consider the Shinmei-ryū warrior hurtling towards her. She abandoned whatever she had intended to do with Konoka and turned away from the battle, Konoka floating alongside her.

And his staff was left lying on the ground, forgotten.

After he overcame his initial freak-out—'_Oh god, Naruto just tried to _kill_ someone!_'—Negi recited his activation key as he gathered easily five times the magic the spell required. He extended the simple incantation and jabbed the wand towards his staff.

"Rastel Maskil Magister! _Mea_ _virga redde!_"

Strengthened in four different ways, the spell so basic it didn't even require a casting device ripped the paper seal on his staff into shreds as his longtime companion slipped smoothly into his open hand despite moving at a speed he couldn't see.

The warm familiarity of the heirloom settled into his bones as his magic naturally aligned itself with the casting device. But the brief spot of comfort faded quickly.

Someone had leapt down from the wall above them to counter Setsuna's attack, the force of the two blows sending each combatant rolling away from one another. Chigusa ignored them entirely as she continued up the stairs.

The impact of twenty-three multicolored globes of light rocketing into her magical defenses was enough to make her pay attention again.

Negi's jaw locked into place as the onmyōji spun to face him, his teeth grinding together in his anger. The world disappeared for a moment, until all Negi could see was magic. Fault lines cracked across the surface of her magical shield as dark lines laid over the top of the oval barrier. But what concerned him was the length of red trailing down from the almost sun-bright Konoka's face.

His eyes refocused and the physical world returned to his sight. Again Chigusa clutched at Konoka's head, her thumb resting atop the unusually long (and unusually blank) ofuda affixed to his student. A red sigil—Sanskrit, perhaps?—traced itself onto the paper.

He didn't wait for it to finish. "_Flāns exarmātiō!_"

The burst of magic-infused wind blew apart the small cyclone the onmyōji had formed. That didn't slow her at all as the ofuda she had held in her other hand came into effect, tearing up the concrete to launch a spread of stone at him.

It was one of the basic tactics in magical combat: she intended to hit his barrier from multiple locations at once to overwhelm it. His shields were more than strong enough to survive the rock shower.

His assumption almost cost him the battle. Each chunk of concrete detonated like earthen grenades upon contact with his screen. Shards shredded his shield from the front while the pieces that had soared past him exploded to pepper his back and sides with more fragments.

Negi didn't have to check his protections to tell that her attack had left the shield only one step away from complete collapse.

"Y'know, if you had more Ministra this wouldn't be a problem."

"Not helping!"

* * *

><p>The monkey demon had been quick, but Setsuna wasn't trying to take it prisoner this time. Her sword arm was faster—but not fast enough to cut down the demon tackling Naruto. The faintest of guilts came over her at not moving to help him, but he could certainly take care of himself.<p>

Ojō-sama could not.

Setsuna leapt over the last set of stairs between her and Konoka-ojōsama, blade readied to strike down and through her kidnapper's barrier. But her attempt fell short as a new player entered the game.

She was forced to shift her sword upwards to knock aside the blade of the girl who had just leapt off the top of the wall. Their aerial collision and the force behind their blows was enough to send each tumbling in opposite directions.

Setsuna rolled with the motion to end the painful spin on her feet. Her opponent didn't bother, and took the scrapes of the hard stairs as punishment.

The girl looked… frail. She was pale and thin, flat and short—well, shorter than Setsuna was, anyway. Her choice of clothing didn't help—the frills on her skirt and blouse were large enough to emphasize her own smallness, even though another layer of frilled and stringy clothing could be seen through her open blouse. Was that even a blouse? Or was it some kind of mixed blouse/bolero jacket… thing?

"Oh… ow, ouch, owie..."

Pink Mary Janes. Black pantyhose that met up with a white-and-pink skirt that led into a pink blouse-thing layered over white. She even had bows—black ribbons tied around her neck and in her hair. They served no purpose—the hair under that giant sunhat was completely straight. She looked like nothing so much as one of those gothic lolita girls that kept popping up on campus.

All in all, she gave Setsuna the uncomfortable impression of a beautiful dress-up doll grown to human proportions. Then someone gave that doll a katana and wakizashi, which did nothing to make her look combat-worthy. The gothic lolita outfit took that away entirely—it was like she had done everything she could to look like a child.

But her eyes…

They were red behind her oval glasses, an unusual color in and of itself. But her gaze was… wrong. Matching her gaze only escalated Setsuna's discomfort to new heights.

"Owie. That really hurt…" The gothloli girl brushed herself off as best she could while holding swords. Standing once again, she smiled charmingly before addressing Setsuna.

"How do you do? I am Tsukino Tsukuyomi, of Kyoto Shinmei-ryū."

Setsuna glared at her and her curtsy. Either not noticing it or completely ignoring Setsuna's expression, Tsukuyomi continued in an overly cutesy voice. "It looks like you follow Shinmei-ryū as well, Senpai… but I'm on a job you know! I can't just let you do as you please."

"Tch. I didn't expect anything else," Setsuna retorted. She eyed the blonde's horrendously impractical clothing with distaste. "Sakurazaki Setsuna, of Kyoto Shinmei-ryū. Is this what the Shinmei School has become while I was away?"

Tsukuyomi laughed. "No, no, I'm quite unique if I do say so myself! But that aside… would you please go easy on me, Senpai?"

That woman got farther away, Ojō-sama dragged through the air behind her. "I don't have time for this!" Setsuna lunged forwards—but Tsukuyomi had moved before she even began and intercepted her before Setsuna could do more than shift her balance.

"Ahahaha! Let's have some fun, Senpai!"

The girl was fast. Very fast.

''_G_o_ easy on me' my ass! If I did I'd be dead already!_'

Tsukuyomi's blades dove at her in a relentless barrage Setsuna hadn't thought the simpering girl to be capable of. Setsuna parried as many blows with her nodachi that she could, but Tsukuyomi refused to allow her to build any distance between them.

Yūnagi alone wasn't enough to keep her at bay; she was thankful for the extent to which she had practiced wielding the long blade in one hand, because she had never needed to use her left this desperately.

She swept away strikes from the above and left before her free hand caught Tsukuyomi's by the wrist, pushing her downwards slash aside. She couldn't capitalize on the grip, as the other Shinmei warrior was quick to attack the offending limb.

Setsuna backpedaled. The laughing girl refused to let Setsuna get away from her and pushed forwards exactly as much as Setsuna fell back, forced to repeat the tactic in a dozen variations as she struggled to establish her balance.

A sharp thrust of the wakizashi was met with steel; a swipe of the katana deflected with a sharp smack of her hand against Tsukuyomi's forearm. She dropped into a half-kneel to knock away another blow to the side and allowing her free hand to grab Tsukuyomi's around the shorter blade. Rolling onto her back, Setsuna pulled the yelping annoyance down with her, cutting that yelp short as her feet struck Tsukuyomi's stomach and flung her behind her.

No sooner did she kick Tsukuyomi away then she jumpped to her feet—and unlike their first clash, her enemy wasn't content to lie on the ground. But Setsuna's maneuver had bought her the brief moment of distance she needed to meet Tsukuyomi's lunge with the sharp point of Yūnagi.

Tsukuyomi pulled back less than an inch before her eye would have introduced itself to her sword. Her desperate movement opened up even more space between them. "Ahaha… so that's what you wanted, Senpai. Clever~ So clever~!" More laughter. "This is exciting!" Her hat had flown off at some point, but the girl clearly didn't care.

Magic from the dueling spellcasters lit the space between them, but neither paid it mind as anything other than another obstacle.

"Stop talking! You're an annoyance!"

Tsukuyomi again closed the ground between them in an instant, but now Setsuna had the advantage of reach—and more importantly, was ready for the rush. A shallow slash with her nodachi forced Tsukuyomi to leap to the side and down the steps to avoid her longer reach. It didn't disturb the overdressed fool's balance in the least, but it did give Setsuna the high ground.

Setsuna's opponent was undeterred and once again began the exchange of blows.

Tsukuyomi had controlled the flow of battle for too long; when Setsuna pushed back her rush, she stepped down after the other swordsman, using the greater weight and length of her nodachi to force Tsukuyomi to fall back.

The sharper and angrier movements of her blades gave away Tsukuyomi's dislike for the defensive position, but her face never changed from that eager grin. She stood her ground against Setsuna's assault, focusing her left arm to defense while trying to step close enough to use her katana.

Tsukuyomi was fast, but not fast enough that she could keep Setsuna at bay with only her off hand. Two short, controlled blows tore an opening in that defense.

Setsuna took it.

"_Shinmei-ryū Secret Technique: Nitou Zanchikakuken!_"

The furious two-sword onslaught cut furrows into the ground and forced Setsuna to leap away from Tsukuyomi, but the damage had been done. Crimson fell from her left arm to dye pink clothing in red. Tsukuyomi grimaced at the deep incision, but showed no sign that she was willing to concede.

"Amazing, Senpai! Ahahaha, it really hurts. Although…" The girl's eyes darkened in unexpected intensity. "Isn't that part of the fun, too?"

Setsuna had to repress the urge to step away at the husky tone that overcame Tsukuyomi's voice, all pretense at cuteness gone.

"Ahahahahaha! _Shinmei-ryū Ukigumo: Nyūdōgumo Kara Rakka_!"

Tsukuyomi all but flew at her, spinning sideways through the air to kick at her a full four times before touching the ground. Setsuna blocked every blow with her sword—only to hear metallic clangs where blade met shoe. Infuriatingly still possessed of feet, Tsukuyomi pushed her attack to make a swing with her blades held together, the momentum of her initial assault giving them a crushing force that Setsuna didn't dare meet directly.

She beat them aside, only for Tsukuyomi to use the redirection to continue her spin into a series of twirling leaps. With blades held close to her body she struck in rapid-fire slashes down onto Setsuna's head. The speed of the motion and insane rate of the blows kept Setsuna focused entirely on her defense, unable to take advantage of the opening such a maneuver would create.

Once one surpasses the speed of a human being, otherwise suicidal tactics become entirely viable.

What had come earlier had been but a tentative scouting of the other's talent. Now that the fight had begun in earnest neither held the slightest restraint in their blows, to their environment's misfortune. Each swing cleaved open the ground following the blade's arc; every slash averted split apart the stairs from the deflected force behind every strike.

Tsukuyomi broke the motion to drop to one knee. Setsuna's blade knocked away the attempt to cut open her calves, but Tsukuyomi's attack had been a feint; her response did nothing to slow Tsukuyomi's spring.

She went from kneeling to airborne in a flash, using her thighs to catch Setsuna's head in a vice. Setsuna had only time for her face to redden and eyes to widen in shock before the Shinmei swordsman rotated into a back flip.

"_Shinmei-ryū Ukigumo: Sakura Sanka!_"

The speed and force behind the attack was enough to send them into two full rotations before Setsuna's back crashed into and shattered the stair steps. Tsukuyomi's release at the last instant let her roll away in a controlled fall, but Setsuna was too stunned by the impact to her head to act.

Her back screamed at her from her harsh landing and the broken concrete jabbing her shoulder blades and spine. She found herself regretting having used the same technique on her teacher. It hurt like hell. And he would have seen her—despite her circumstances, her blush refused to disappear.

She looked to the sky in a daze. The lights of the city drowned out the stars. And just below an adjacent building's rooftop was an ofuda, pierced through by a shuriken.

* * *

><p>Reinforced glass will break as easily as the normal kind if one used enough force, Naruto's shoulders politely informed him as healing flesh pushed the shards out of his body.<p>

Chigusa. That was her name. He wanted to [_**PIERCE THEM INTO HER WRETCHED FLESH**_]! The events of the day and the image of the collapsed Konoka flashed behind the red-eyed boy's eyelids with every blink and his chest heaved without ever getting enough air to drive out the burning that swelled within his torso.

If he could have he would have rushed outside again to confront her again. But he doubted that whatever hit him would let him just leave.

Naruto leapt away as soon as he and the red thing landed despite the pain in his shoulders, vaulting over a counter to place it between him and it. The other simply stood up, showing no sign of being inconvenienced from the glass or cracked tiles underfoot despite its lack of footwear.

He paled as he got a good look at his opponent, his murderous urges replaced entirely by a familiar and deep-seated horror. Weren't both of the sorceress's demons supposed to be outside?!

The demon was huge—so large that his horns nearly brushed against the ceiling. The desks of the large office didn't even reach his knees. A fanged mouth snarled at him as though repulsed by Naruto's existence; unnatural yellow light shone out of narrowed eyes. His wild and spiky hair started just behind his horns and gleamed like metal; the rest of his body was covered in short crimson fur interspaced with spines at his joints. The skin beneath was only a lighter shade of the same.

His form mimicked that of a human, though no face had ever been that sharp and bestial. His fists were larger than Naruto's head, his arms thick and bulging with muscles. A long tail lashed about behind him, its riled swishing knocking aside chairs and desks as if they were no heavier than paper. His body was crossed with countless scars visible even through his fur; even one of his horns was broken to a mere stump.

Massive wings, each fully as large as the rest of him, beat restlessly as the red demon glared at him. "A mere child… to think Amagasaki needed me to save her from you! Pathetic, but nothing more than I would expect from a human." He sneered as he took a step towards Naruto.

His deep voice bit out every word with a growl, power and confidence that projected from him in an almost palpable aura. The very _feel_ of violence spiraled around him, and Naruto couldn't stop the shiver of fear that ran down his spine at looking upon a demon in the flesh.

Yet… even as he approached him and his bloodlust weighed down the air, Naruto's foremost thought was amazement at how little the demon resembled his own. Neither in body nor in spirit did he even approach what Naruto lived with. He was intimidating, but wasn't remotely near the level of terror needed to make Naruto freeze up. Naruto's lips spread in a soundless snarl.

His hand slipped into his yukata to the bandoleer of gear strapped across his chest. The resulting handful of kunai shot towards the demon as a blur, but the monster's only reaction was to pull his left wing out of the way.

Naruto's eyes spread wide in disbelief. The kunai had sunk less than two inches into the demon's chest—by the looks of it, he doubted they had even gone through the whole muscle!

His enemy stared at the wounds on his chest as though they surprised him, his massive hand ripping them out of his torso without delicacy. "You actually managed to hurt me with simple knives? I am impressed, mortal. But now I—"

It was rude to interrupt someone while they were talking; Naruto didn't particularly care. He jumped past the arm reaching for him and, with all the strength he could muster, slammed his fist into the demon's stomach.

The impact sounded like the crash of rock upon rock, and the raw power behind Naruto's blow sent the red demon flying to the far end of the room into the wall—and through it, chunks of wood and concrete spraying outward from the new hole.

Beside the hole, the kunai that missed was visible only by the ring, both blade and hilt pierced through the cinder blocks in the walls.

The dust billowing out from the new opening was enough to obscure his view. Naruto silently hopped over the now-broken counter with shuriken in hand. He didn't think that would be enough to take care of a demon. The broken cinder block that slammed into his former position told him he'd made a good decision—although when he had to drop to the floor to avoid a second block hurtling at his chest, he realized that moving might not have made a real difference.

The dust blew away from the demon's body as he walked through the hole. He didn't duck into it, instead just taking a step that tore the opening to his size. The wall creaked before exploding outwards with a mighty flex of his wings.

He stared intently at Naruto, paying no heed to the wall he had destroyed. "'Impressed' was far too mild a word," the demon said softly. Even without volume his voice was deep enough to vibrate the loose rubble. He stood tall despite Naruto's blow to the stomach. "I've not met such as you in a long time. The memory of this fight and your coming death will surely entertain me for many years to come."

Red coiled around the demon's hand as he focused the entirety of his attention on Naruto. "Know now the name of your destroyer: I am _RUBICANTE_! He Who Grows Red! Destroyer of Thrones, Duke of Mundus Prīmigenius, Red Faced Terror of the Malebranche!"

"I am the Grand Exarch of the one you call Ryōmen Sukuna no Kami. I have toppled kingdoms and stolen enough lives to build a cathedral of bones. I have burned cities and salted the earth behind me." The red swirled outwards, thickening and dulling until the demon held a machete-like sword of iron that dwarfed Setsuna's nodachi. "I am Rubicante, and I will adorn my cathedra with your skull!"

Naruto snorted at the list of titles and deeds. For all the power that raged about him, Rubicante seemed altogether… human-like, despite his inhumanity. He wasn't _Other_. Fear crept around the corners of his consciousness, but the terror Naruto had felt at the thought of fighting a demon was gone. It was hard to be genuinely scared of something he just threw through a wall.

This wasn't an impossible fight at all. Hell, the two demons outside were most likely dead already! The red drained from his eyes as the fear ebbed. A hot rush of excitement filled its place.

"I'm Uzumaki Naruto. I'm the guy who's going to break your face so badly that I'll take center stage in your nightmares until the day you die!"

* * *

><p>"<em>Septendecim spīritūs lūcis; Sagitta Magica, Seriēs Lūcis!<em>"

Some manner of summoned beast took Negi's magic arrows to the chest and faded away before it had even fully arrived. But Chigusa was hardly slowed and had another ofuda right at hand.

She began an incantation, red once more forming into symbols on the paper attached to Konoka. It had been the same since their first clash—Chigusa would cast spells using Konoka's power and toss out an ofuda to counter him whenever he tried to act. Her magical chanting was slow, but those paper seals of hers more than made up for that flaw.

The paper crumbled to launch a storm of thorns at him. A stream of snapping sounds marked their impact onto the stone, Negi having already scrambled away from the danger zone.

There had been no time for him to cast the lengthy spell required to fully restore his shield, and the makeshift barrier he hsf gotmrf was marred by more cracks than he could count. Chigusa's attack had forced Negi to keep moving, or risk his only protection being torn apart

"_Flāns exarmātiō!_"

The Wind Flower spell blew past the dueling Shinmei warriors to splash harmlessly off of Chigusa's new shield. Those ofuda were just unfair. She responded with a jet of flame that flew too fast for him to escape from; he hid his face behind his elbow and sacrificed protection from his sides and back to reinforce his forward shielding.

The crackling of burning fire filled Negi's ears and heat seared his skin, but his barrier survived, if only barely.

"Rastel Maskil Magister! _Trēsvīgintī spīritūs fulgurālēs, fulgurantia per caelī inimīcum īnflīgentēs! Sagitta Magica, Seriēs Fulgurālis!_"

Negi rushed the spell out as quickly as he could, directing the arrows to split into two groups: the larger struck and destroyed the rising boulders that had just pulled themselves from the ground, while the smaller crashed into Chigusa's shield. Blue-white lightning popped along the outer barrier of her shield. But even the thunder did nothing to muffle the continuous ring of crashing swords.

And Negi noticed something

He focused, forcing himself to see past the physical into the realm of magic, and saw the world fade into darkness.

Standing beside Konoka's sun, a torch formed lashes of blue that lashed out at him like spider legs. Negi dove to the ground to avoid them, wincing at the impact. He hadn't expected to skin his knees and hand, but it was rather difficult to move without seeing the ground. He needed to act quickly.

Negi focused on the torchlight that was Chigusa. Strands of the sun wove into her hand before being cast out from the onmyōji's hand. More importantly, he could see the tethers connecting Chigusa and Konoka, and how the light was dimmed into something Chigusa could handle. The light she then funneled into the outermost layers of barriers protecting her—the _angular_ barriers.

Negi returned his sight to the real world with satisfaction. That was why his own attacks were so easily endured when her barrier should have already been damaged. Her shield was shaped like a wedge directed at him, meaning that instead of blocking his attacks she was _deflecting_ them, splitting the magic at the point of the shield only for the two halves of the spell to slide along the edges with much reduced power.

He'd have to remember that trick.

"_Flans saltatio pulverea!_" Negi snapped out the spell with a shortened vocal component, sacrificing power for speed to blow apart the sliding pillars of green fire his enemy had sent his way. But his action bought him no more time as Chigusa finished casting her Konoka-powered spell.

A dark purple cloud coalesced out of nothingness meters above him. Negi ran straight ahead to escape from its shadow, accompanied by the sound of his barrier shattering like glass at the strike of an amethyst bolt of lightning. But although its last gasps of power had protected him from the witch's electricity, his fragments of shield gave him no such defense against the black rain that followed.

Negi had already reached the edge of the cloud's radius and escaped before more than a handful of raindrops splattered onto him. But even that little was enough to elicit a gasp of pain. Holes dotted his clothing where it had hit and burnt through, and he could feel thick red welts, like wasp stings, swelling where his skin had been touched. Chamo yelped and flung himself off Negi, a patch of red covering a large portion of the tiny ermine's body.

Frustration and fear struggled to rise above each other. He had underestimated her earlier spell and this was the price. But her next spell would almost certainly be enough to crush him, and from everything he'd seen of her Negi was very much worried that 'crush' was a word that would be applied as literally as possible.

He needed to buy more time! But Asuna had that demon to deal with, and the crashing sounds from inside the building told him that Naruto was also too busy to help out. That Tsukuyomi certainly wouldn't let Setsuna have a moment to give him, and Konoka was—

Oh. That was it.

"Amagasaki-san!" Negi called out in a loud voice. "Tell me, what is it that you mean to do with Konoka-san? You've gone through an awful lot of effort if all you wanted was a magic battery!"

* * *

><p>Steel crashed into steel in such rapid succession that it sounded like the lengthy tolling of some distorted bell.<p>

Tsukuyomi's blades were a blur as the bespectacled girl tried to endure Setsuna's renewed assault. Setsuna's eyes cut into the still-smiling Tsukuyomi's, neither swordsman daring to let their attention stray from one another. The byproduct of their chi-enhanced attacks rent deep grooves into the cement, turning the ground a hazard in and of itself.

Setsuna kept the pressure on her as she layered rapid-fire blows on the girl, relying on short, controlled movements to keep Tsukuyomi at a distance. But the girl's defense was nearly as strong as her offense when she actually dedicated herself to it, and the swift spinning and frequent reversions in the grip of her weapons had let her keep standing despite the speed and force of Setsuna's assault.

Her advance began to slow down, the fatigue from her rush and swift assault weighing down on her arms. Tsukuyomi's grin widened as she used the resulting opening in Setsuna's offense to thrust her wakizashi at her neck.

She dodged to her right to attack Tsukuyomi from the side. Had she telegraphed her move, or had Tsukuyomi already begun to understand her movements? Regardless, Tsukuyomi had been ready for the move, forcing Setsuna to move right into the path of Tsukuyomi's slash.

Pain exploded through her torso as the short blade dug between her lower ribs. Had she not jumped back as soon as she saw Tsukuyomi's trap it would have crippled her ability to keep standing.

"Maybe I couldn't take first blood," giggled Tsukuyomi as she raised her katana, "But that's fine. There'll be a lot more before the end."

Setsuna's stomach flipped at the sight of Tsukuyomi sliding the bloody metal between her lips, painting it red like some manner of demented lipstick. It was the most horrifying thing she'd ever seen.

"That was the most horrifying thing I've ever seen."

Tsukuyomi laughed at her with her bloodstained lips. "Really, Senpai? That's kind of cute, you know."

Setsuna tried to decapitate her.

But the psychopath had chosen the same moment to attack. Her opponent dashed forwards, leaning so far forwards that her torso was nearly parallel to the ground and leaving Setsuna's blade to sweep harmlessly through the air above her.

She was force to make a controlled fall over Tsukuyomi; her position wouldn't permit her the leap she would need to avoid the blades scissoring at her legs. She tried to land on her to keep the smaller girl still for a moment, but Tsukuyomi slipped away before she could. Setsuna managed to land a strike on her foot that forced the other girl to the ground.

Surprisingly, her sword actually bit into the heel of the shoe this time, although it didn't pierce all the way through.

That must have been why her shoes had been so hard earlier—she reinforced them with chi. It was certainly more sensible than having shoes made of iron. The idle thought drifted harmlessly along the outer edge of her awareness.

With Tsukuyomi prone and facing the wrong way, Setsuna used her momentum to roll to her feet, swinging her nodachi upwards to send her body into spin in a variation of Tsukuyomi's earlier assault. Chi built up along her shoulders and the width of Yūnagi as she brought the blade down with devastating force at the conclusion of her second rotation.

Setsuna almost missed Tsukuyomi's toothy grin as the girl flipped over.

"_Shinmei-ryū Secret Technique: Zandaigumoken!_"

"_Hyakuretsu Ōkazan!_"

The power of her technique meant nothing in face of the Sword of a Hundred Flaming Cherry Blossoms. Had her instincts not screamed the moment Tsukuyomi started to roll over, Setsuna wouldn't have been able to grab her protective sutra in time.

The fistful of paper tore apart as they layered barriers over her, barriers nearly torn apart by her closeness to storm of pink shards, and shattering entirely upon the impact of Tsukuyomi's wakizashi. The force of the attack threw Setsuna down the flight of stairs, although she easily landed on her feet.

Her breath was ragged as she forced herself to inhale properly rather than gasp for air like her lungs wanted her to. Setsuna glared up at the girl who had spun to her feet. Regardless of the strength of Setsuna's attack, she was nowhere near skilled enough to land the blow without being shredded by the hundreds of razor-sharp slivers produced by the technique. She was grudgingly impressed with Tsukuyomi for pulling off the Hyakuretsu Ōkazan from the ground.

"Wow. I mean, just wow! That was amazing, Setsuna-Senpai!" Despite her giggling Tsukuyomi looked far more serious than she had at the beginning of their fight. Her dress was covered in tears from near-misses and the bursts of energy released in their clashes, and her skirt was in danger of falling apart. Her pantyhose had suffered enough to split open in a number of places, revealing more of her long, toned, smooth legs. And of course, her earlier cut on Tsukuyomi's arm painted much of her left side in crimson.

That blood seeped down to coat her hand, holding a twisted and ruined wakizashi. "If I hadn't pulled that off you would have definitely finished me off." Her lips contorted into what could hesitantly be called a smile. Setsuna saw genuine happiness there, but her grin held something else that Setsuna didn't want to think about.

Tsukuyomi's eyes darkened with need. "I would have _died_. I don't remember ever being nearly dead. And despite being forced to defend yourself, you all but destroyed my sword. This is exciting. I don't think I've ever had this much fun before!"

Setsuna ignored the shudder that ran down her spine at Tsukuyomi's… _sensual_ tone. "I don't need your complements. You know I have the advantage now."

"Yup. That's also a part of the fun!"

Setsuna scowled. "I'm not here to play with you. If you leave now I won't hurt you. Go do something that will let you keep your limbs, like making tea or playing with dolls or _putting on some damned panties!_"

Tsukuyomi blushed and brought her hands to her cheeks, ignoring the blades on each side of her head. "O-oh my! Teeheehee… you saw?"

"You grabbed my head with your thighs! I couldn't _not_ see!"

"Teehee… You're so naughty, Senpai!"

A vein twitched in Setsuna's forehead. "Pay attention to what I'm saying if you're going to talk while we fight!"

"Amagasaki-san! Tell me, what is it that you mean to do with Konoka-san? You've gone through an awful lot of effort if all you wanted was a living magic battery!"

Setsuna's attention flickered away from Tsukuyomi when Negi called out his question. She couldn't afford to not to pay notice if it was about Ojō-sama.

The description made her eyes narrow in fury, but her sensei had the right of it. Situational awareness had forced her to take note of the magic crackling through the air, and that kidnapper sorceress was definitely not using her own power.

"Hm? So you want to know? I've half a mind not to tell you, but I'm a nice person. It would be tragic if you had to live your entire life wondering about today and never knowing why it happened."

Turning her gaze away was a mistake, one Tsukuyomi immediately took advantage of. She kept hold of her wakizashi, but once she realized it was only slowing her down she tossed it aside, a realization Setsuna helped along by scoring a cut on her uninjured arm.

"With Konoka-ōjosama's power, the Honganji Faction will have enough strength to force the council of the Kyoto Magic Association to pass our laws and policies. Plenty at the Association would flock to us for the power at our command—be it from awe, fear, greed, or force."

Despite being reduced to a single weapon Tsukuyomi was still faster than her and was smaller in both blade and body. Setsuna's greater reach forced the other Shinmei swordsman back each time Tsukuyomi tried to advance.

Words ran through her head, bypassing her ears entirely. :_Nē-san! Make sure you pay attention. Aniki's distracting that Chigusa lady, so get ready to go in there and save Konoka-nēsan!_:

The unexpected and unfamiliar sensation of telepathy gave Setsuna a brief dizziness—whatever reply she might have given was swallowed up in fending off Tsukuyomi's renewed assault. :_S-sorry, Nē-san._:

"The Elder could throw any of our plans into ruin, but with Ōjo-sama under our control he wouldn't dare to take action against us. Particularly once he and the Association learn that Konoka-ōjosama was with us of her own 'free' will."

"'Free will'? Surely you don't think that Konoka-san would ever want to join you?"

Chigusa Amagasaki's mocking laughter grated painfully in Setsuna's ears as she worked to drive back Tsukuyomi.

* * *

><p>The demon had no concern for whatever got in the way of his sword. Desks, chairs, pillars, walls—all were ripped apart without slowing Rubicante's swing. The offices they left behind had been reduced to unrecognizable debris.<p>

The force behind Rubicante's blade was insane. Naruto didn't even try to block it with the small weapons in his possession, forced instead to rely on his reflexes and agility to evade the blows. But although the red demon wasn't as fast as he was strong, he was still far quicker than he had any right to be.

Naruto sorely regretted his lack of training, for the exact opposite reason as in his fight with Setsuna. While there he couldn't defend himself against her skill and speed, with Rubicante he was unable to move from evasion into an offense. Speed and reflexes only went so far.

Obviously, the answer was to cheat. But it would have been nice for foul play to be an option rather than the only direction available.

"Stay still, mortal! Stand up and die with honor!"

Naruto clung to the side of one of the floor-to-ceiling columns interspaced throughout the large room. "I'd like to keep my head for a while longer, thank you."

A roar of frustration accompanied Rubicante's next strike, forcing Naruto to leap away from his perch. He reached up and tagged the ceiling with his fingers, clinging to it and sending his body to arc upwards into the tiles. Rubicante's follow-up blow tore through the air above where Naruto would have landed had it not been for that maneuver.

He scurried aside to avoid the upwards swing that was Rubicante's response. The frustrated beating of the demon's wings demolished the pillar he had just cut in half as he advanced with blow after furious blow.

Naruto rolled backwards along the ceiling before dropping, leaping to his right as soon as he hit the ground to dodge the chunk of ceiling Rubicante tore down. He rushed the demon's exposed side, but Rubicante was faster than he had anticipated. A great red wing beat his arm aside, opening a chance for Rubicante's tail to lash into his chest.

The force was enough to hurl him through the air and into a desk that shattered under his shoulders.

Although his back wanted him to avoid further motion, Naruto forced himself to grab half of the desk and throw it at the crimson demon.

Rubicante easily batted it aside, but couldn't avoid the shuriken hidden in its shadow. The tiny metal weapons sunk into his hip and legs, though no deeper than the kunai had earlier.

"May Twin-Faced Sukuna _damn_ you, mortal! Your weapons do no more than sting—I can't tell if you're a warrior or an insect."

"I'm a ninja, and your freakishly-faced god can go choke himself on his tongues."

"You—that is blasphemy!" A new and righteous rage darkened his features. "You _dare_ blaspheme?! Your mockery of our duel was already enough to deserve retribution, but this—no amount of your suffering will ever be enough to make up this affront to my god. But I assure you, I will try."

Rubicante unleashed a bestial roar as he lunged at Naruto. But his distraction had let Naruto return to his feet and gave him the moment needed to reach into his backpack. But despite his reflexes he wasn't so quick that he would be able to avoid the unexpected lunge from the demon, and instead of a smoke bomb he pulled out the first thing in his hand. He didn't waste time unsheathing the tantō as he brought it to meet the crimson demon's attack.

The sheath shattered completely while chakra-forged steel bent with a screech from the staggering strength behind Rubicante's blow. The strike numbed Naruto's hands while leaving his arms to burn with pain. He staggered back, his deformed weapon clattering to the floor. Now within arm's reach, Rubicante reached out with one huge hand to take hold of Naruto.

Or he tried to. Rubicante's hand went right through Naruto's bunshin, dispelling it. Naruto grinned from his position behind the demon and pulled hard on the wires in his hand.

The shuriken he had thrown, each with a wire looped through the hole in the middle, ripped across the curves of Rubicante's legs as they were dragged out of his skin from behind.

Rubicante gave an agonized bellow and spun around, fury alighting in his eyes at the sight of Naruto kneeling alongside the bloodied shuriken, painted a dark red from the demon's fluids. "Miserable rat! I engage you in even combat and you descend to such soul trickery? I will drag your wretched soul before the Great Ryōmen Sukuna and offer you as a sacrifice to be devoured for his revitalization. You will suffer this pain a hundred by a hundred times over!"

He rushed at Naruto without heed to the blood pouring from the gashes in his legs that by all rights should have severed his tendons. His machete cleaved through air and stone in a flurry of strikes that Naruto only barely managed to avoid—the counters and pillars he used in his movements weren't so lucky.

When Naruto's maneuvering managed to get him some distance from his attacker, Rubicante paused. Naruto's sense of danger screamed at him when the giant demon lifted his empty hand.

He leapt into the air only moments before a red lance materialized into existence and launched from his enemy's hand at such speed that it sounded like the air was screaming. But he had leapt to get distance from his enemy, which with that ranged attack had become a hindrance. Naruto had only the barest of warnings—a hint of scarlet coalescing around Rubicante's hand—by which to dodge the next two spears.

Naruto's breath came heavily from all the effort he had to put into evading the red beast. He wasn't tired though, not by a long shot. Still… he would give up a lot to have an effective distance attack right then.

"Tricky bastard… where'd you get a move like that?" he asked, buying time until he could think of a way to approach without becoming a new stain on the floor. He was fortunate that the demon had forced them into this building—it was the perfect setting to take advantage of his mobility across the floor and ceiling.

"Oh?" Rubicante's face took on some unpleasant combination of sneer and smirk. "Have you nothing with which to reply to my Cinnabaris Lancea? A pity. I expected more from you, Uzumaki."

"That's a horrible name. What does that even mean?" There it was…

"I should have expected that a blaspheming peasant wouldn't know of the languages of faith. You may know it as the Vermillion Lance, and it—"

Naruto dashed into motion, cutting Rubicante's speech short. His ears ached as screeching Vermillion Lances pierced into the floor only hairsbreadths behind him as he circled his enemy, but he wouldn't have to worry about them for long.

As soon as he got into position, Naruto knelt before jumping with as much force as he could muster. He slipped through the hole Rubicante had ripped from the ceiling to land on his side on the next floor.

Naruto had time for a single breath before he had to fling himself to the side. The blade of Rubicante's giant sword appeared as it cut upwards through the floor, leaving a gash over his stomach. Naruto kept rolling despite the screaming protests of his belly, certain that the demon had been able to hear the sound of his movements—and from the red spears that pierced completely through this floor and into the next, he was right.

He sprang to his feet and jumped once more, clinging to the ceiling with his chakra. Naruto kept still and silent as Rubicante tore up the floor from below, filling the room with the sound of chopped wood and metal beams. He smiled and had to hide a chuckle at the demon's useless sword-waving—then winced, as his silent laughter sent new streaks of pain through his torso. But less than there had been before.

Rubicante realized soon enough the futility of his actions. Naruto wasn't certain how he had expected Rubicante to get to his floor, but he certainly didn't think the red demon would just jump. The floor below Naruto exploded like a wall tackled by Godzilla as Rubicante burst through the floor, sending sawdust and pieces of ceiling flying across the room.

Metal screeched as it tore, tiles shattered and lumber groaned and splintered. The crash of rubble raining onto the ground boomed through the room, but beat of Rubicante's wings against the air drowned it out. The demon hovered in place above his hole with anger marring his face.

Then Naruto hit him on the forehead with a smoke bomb.

Rubicante coughed from the black smoke that almost instantly enveloped everything within ten feet, and Naruto heard the crunch as he landed on the debris-strewn wooden floor.

"Do you think your tricks will protect you? You cannot hide from me, Uzumaki!"

On the floor once more, Naruto had half-removed his backpack, one hand digging into the pouches, when the screaming red bolt shot out of the cloud and buried itself into the wall by his head. He pulled the bag back over his shoulders as he leapt away from a trio of Cinnabaris Lancea.

With a great roar the red demon-priest beat his wings, the resulting winds more than strong enough to disperse the obscuring smoke. Rubicante opened his eyes to glare at Naruto, who just threw another smoke bomb at him.

Rubicante screamed in frustrated rage. "Did you not see me dispel your ebon fog? Stay still so I can rip off your head for the inconveniences you have visited upon me this eve!"

Once more Rubicante blew away Naruto's smoke—but Naruto had completed his preparations. The demon found not the one enemy he expected, but _six_.

Naruto and his bunshin flashed identical grins. "So, whose head did you want again? You only get to pick once, you know."

Rubicante's flat face told him that the scarlet monster hadn't appreciated his humor, and to be honest Naruto regretted saying it. Damn it, why was witty banter so difficult?

Once more the massive mountain-cleaver that was supposed to be a sword lashed out with a speed something its size shouldn't possess. The Narutos split apart, leaving only one of the illusory copies to fade away at the demon's swipe.

* * *

><p>With a growl Rubicante spun, his tail lashing out to bash into another Uzumaki with enough force to snap his spine—if he had been real. A Lancea Cinnabaris tore open another of the little wretch's imitations while he flung his sword into the far wall, another two copies dispelled at its touch.<p>

Fury surged through every part of Rubicante's mind. This Uzumaki's dishonorable tricks and incessant evasion were offenses he could not forgive. He dashed across the room to smash the cretin into the wall. A sneer crossed his face as his hand passed through the illusion's chest to rip out a large chunk of the building's side.

"Your copies are gone, Uzumaki," Rubicante extolled with no small amount of relish as he pulled his blade out of the wall. "Surely you've come to realize your deceptions will amount to nothing? You have strength. Wield it! I'll not tolerate further insult from you."

He grinned as his words had a visible effect on his opponent. Uzumaki's eyes narrowed and his jaw took a determined cast, and in only a moment weapons resembling small scythes were in his hands. His opponent set himself in a ready stance, daring Rubicante to take the first move.

He did.

His sword thrust forth at the end of his charge and Rubicante readied his response to Uzumaki's counter—and then his sword went straight through him. As did his arm.

Rubicante experienced an instant of blinding fury before a foot struck his back, right between his wings.

Once more, the force behind the filth's unguarded strike was enough to send Rubicante through the air—but as he rolled to bring his wings to bear he felt a constricting sensation around the fragile limbs.

The next moment was one of pain.

The walls shook from the force of Rubicante's roar. He collapsed onto the ground, sharp agony screaming at him as his wings bled. The force of Uzumaki's attack had pulled tight the metal wires looped around his wings. Were he less hardy, the razor-thin wire would have sheared off his wings entirely.

But Rubicante was not weak. He bled, yes, and the wires cut deeply into the softer skin of his wings—but he was not crippled. No, if anything were to cripple him, it would the uncontrollable storm of hate that overtook him at this latest of the rat's tricks.

The air boiled with his anger as he rose to his feet. The wires fell apart, which relieved some of the pain in his wings but only made his fury grow. The floor blackened under his footsteps as he advanced on Uzumaki.

"**You… I shall visit upon you such wrath that you will **_**beg**_** for me to kill you.**"

He rushed forwards faster than he ever had before. The rat struck the flat of the blade to his side, only to take Rubicante's heavy kick in the stomach. Uzumaki soared across the room, and had only just crashed into the wall when his fist, like a great red mace, bashed him through it.

The force tossed Naruto across the full length of the room, staining the carpet with drops of blood. Rubicante took hold of the wall and tore it out, carelessly tossing a mass of masonry larger than his own body behind him as he walked through the hole.

The room shook as it impacted and broke through the floor he had earlier damaged. The supports of the room below, already shattered or cut in half over their match, collapsed completely. The roar of the building crashing down resounded like melodious song into his ears as wood crunched and stone ground together, only to be met by the deeper sound of the dying structure's walls tearing apart.

Dust rose from the destruction and rushed through the opening he had made, but it meant nothing to Rubicante. He briefly looked up. A part of the ceiling in this section of the building had been brought down with the collapse of the other. The stars shone with distant apathy, uncaring of the struggles of beings such as he. But they still held power and still held secrets. The days to come promised to be auspicious indeed.

His gaze returned to the human boy. Uzumaki knelt, forced to use his arms to keep even that lowly position. His mouth and lips were stained red, as was his Japanese robe. Uzumaki had pulled it open to remove some manner of bandolier, which Rubicante noted had been cut open. Uzumaki's stomach had crimson blood painted unevenly across it—much seemed to have been absorbed by his clothes, but even so… Rubicante couldn't see a wound at all.

Then he felt… it was faint, but it was there. So faint that if he hadn't been scrutinizing Uzumaki he would have missed it.

"Hmph. It has been a long time since I last saw a human possessed of youki. How many generations?"

Uzumaki swallowed as he looked up and across the room at Rubicante. "W-what?"

Rubicante's eyes narrowed. His earlier act of destruction had eased no small part of his anger, and the sight of the boy crushed to the floor did his heart well, but his ignorance stoked the embers of his impatience. "Do not act coy, Uzumaki. I can feel your regeneration. How many generations has it been since your family's dirty blood mixed with the purity of demonkind? No half-demon would have so little of the power as you, nor their child… no, I doubt even five generations would leave even a newly spawned human with such weak youki."

Although considering how little there was, that Uzumaki was capable of such regeneration was nothing short of remarkable. Had he been more pure, he would have become potent indeed—Rubicante imagined he must be strongly specialized in regeneration to manage with so little.

Rubicante had not the vaguest conception of how deeply flawed his assumptions were.

"You bastard—"

"Oh? You dislike it? How absurd. You should be proud of your blood—it raises you above the filth that have come to rule this planet." Rubicante paused before correcting himself. "You should be proud of your blood while you still have it. Your slight increase in worth does nothing to change that I will kill you."

Uzumaki's eyes flashed red. Only further proof of his heritage. "Take it back."

"No."

The demon child screamed in rage and burst into movement. With a speed that belied his earlier injuries he struck at Rubicante with dagger in hand. Unable to dodge, Rubicante instead sacrificed his left arm to keep the knife from piercing his chest.

He grimaced at the flush of pain consuming his forearm. It sunk much deeper than it had when Uzumaki had thrown it.

Rubicante's tail swung around to beat Uzumaki away, but the boy dove to the floor. He barely touched the ground before leaping into the air. Rubicante used his damaged arm to protect his torso from the boy's kick, but the force of the blow still knocked him into the air.

He tried to right himself with his wings, but a vice-like grip on his tail didn't permit him to. The boy swung him around by his tail, pulling Rubicante over his shoulders to slam him into the floor and up again, breaking him halfway through the ceiling before Uzumaki tried to further manhandle him.

'Tried' being the operative word—digging his claws into the surface, he lifted his tail off the ground entirely, easily lifting Uzumaki's weight, before slamming it back down. The muffled cry from below told him that Uzumaki didn't much appreciate having his face smashed into the floor. He would inflict far worse for the disgrace Uzumaki had made of this battle. Swung like a toy! Rubicante would swing him by his entrails.

A shrug of his powerful arms was enough to tear him free of his confines, the simple material insufficient to harm his superior body. Stone and roof fell onto Uzumaki when Rubicante landed just a foot shy of smashing the boy's face underfoot. With preternatural agility Uzumaki flipped to his feet in the small distance between them, thrusting his fist into Rubicante's stomach with the action.

He was forced back by the disproportionately powerful strike, but the space he could have used to bring his blade to bear was taken as the demon child leapt at him. He smashed the hilt upwards, but the boy only used the motion to push himself onto the ceiling where he immediately bounced down like a tightly wound spring.

Uzumaki's foot struck the top of his head, but even that force wasn't enough to damage Rubicante's horned skull. His tail had only just begun its thrust when he realized that Uzumaki made no motion to jump. Instead he toppled over—but as though attached, his foot continued to cling to Rubicante's scalp.

Uzumaki curled into a flip and Rubicante found his face unceremoniously bashed into the floor.

Rubicante rose even quicker than Uzumaki did, but the demon child only rose enough to cartwheel around his vertical swing and kip up behind him.

Rubicante had not forgotten his earlier humiliation, and his wings beat backwards to strike Uzumaki before his opponent could attack his back again. He spun about to backhand the boy before the dazed demon child realized what happened.

Uzumaki spun from the blow and dropped like a sack upon landing four meters away. He had little opportunity to respond before Rubicante grabbed his leg and threw him into the wall, and through it.

The boy screamed out as his body burst through the stone barrier, contorting through the air to crash onto the pavement. Uzumaki hit the ground with enough force to send him skidding and rolling backwards, further tearing his clothing and skin.

He had managed only to push himself up to his hands and knees when Rubicante's sword swung down into his back.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note<strong>:

I've been getting some complaints. A number of people seem to think that my Naruto isn't strong enough. Allow me to say this: _every single character_ in this story is more powerful (and sometimes more insane) than their canon counterparts, or will be once things start to spice up. Even the bear and monkey. And, yes, even Takane the Stripper Girl. Does this mean she'll be able to keep her clothes?

Spoilers: No.

Do you think I'm being too descriptive? This is actually a lot smaller than it was, and looking through big-name successful stories (both fanfiction and otherwise) I'm concerned that I may be trying too hard to make you visualize what I do. Please give me your opinion over this so I can improve my future fight scenes.

**Yūnagi**: Translating to "Evening Calm", Yūnagi is the name of Setsuna's nodachi, given to her as a gift by its previous user Eishun. The guardless, unornamented style of the hilt and sheath is called "shirasaya", which is typically used for a sword that is being put in storage or otherwise not meant to be put to work (hence the lack of a guard protecting the hands from the blade). As most Japanese swords are able to be disassembled, one would move the blade from a normal mounting to the shirasaya and back again as needed. The traditional, familiar handle & guard of the katana ("koshirae") is made from lacquered wood, and leaving the blade in that mounting can eventually result in it getting damaged from gathered moisture. Shirasaya isn't meant for swords seeing use in combat… but then again, Yūnagi isn't exactly a normal sword and Setsuna isn't exactly a normal combatant.

**Kansai-ben**: The Kansai regional dialect. Most notably (as this is story is in English), the aforementioned "-han" in place of "-san" as an honorific. Interestingly, in the same translation I've read Chigusa using both (Ofuda-san and Tsukuyomi-han), but as I'm not sure if that was a translation error I'm going to use the Kansai-ben term.

**Ōjo /Ojō**: I could have sworn I discussed this earlier, but it isn't in any of my author's notes—although I do mention that I discussed it, I apparently actually haven't. Maybe I accidentally deleted that segment?

Oujo is used for an actual princess, whereas ojou can be more broadly applied (but typically is used for a child born into wealth or power). The actual translation is "lord's daughter" and "daughter" (someone else's, obviously), and with the "-sama" you so often see tacked on at the end they become very respectful terms of address. Konoka is, with a bit of a stretch, an ōjo-sama, but ojō-sama is more appropriate for the current state of the Konoe family (a subject for later).

**Harisen**: A paper fan used in straight man/idiot comedy routines to beat the idiot. Normally much smaller than the Ensis Exorcizans

**Magic-Activation Item**: A.K.A. channeling tool, focusing instrument, casting device, etc. These are objects that, due to inherent magical properties or ritual preparation, are suited to channel outwards the magic that a mage gathers from the world. The quality of the object and its relationship to the spell being cast can influence its effectiveness and its baseline function. The best are attuned to a single user and will be sub-par in the hands of another unless they are re-attuned, which is a difficult process. It is easier, however, when the new user is of the same blood as the previous, and over time an item can become more powerful for such users as it adjusts more perfectly to that bloodline over generations. Demons and magical creatures often have their own bodies as magic-activation items, and unfortunately are sometimes hunted down to make more powerful or specialized devices from their flesh.

**Ofuda**:

Most of the time the verbal component is nothing more than a word or two, as Chigusa showed in her fight against Negi. However, one can take the time to vocalize a request of the ofuda and the spirit within to greater effect. Due to how ritualized this branch of onmyōdo is, such a plea should have at least a minimal poetic form to it. Chigusa's took the form of a single, lengthy Chōka (some 5-7 sets of syllables ending with a 5-7-7).

"_Ofuda-han_

_Ofuda-han, call forth_

_The tides to save us_

_From our irate enemies!_

_(offscreen stuff…)_

_Ofuda-han_

_Oh great Ofuda-han!_

_Reduce all mankind_

_To ashes: Kyōraku_

_Daimonji-yaki!_"

Yes, Chigusa sucks at poetry (she, not me. Really. I'm not lying. At all) This was way too straightforward, but that's still enough for a spirit. It's outstandingly short for this kind of poem, but we don't hear the rest that Chigusa used during the chase (there were some that didn't have visible effects, couldn't be made out by our heroes, or that weren't related to her pursuers).

Her "final" ofuda would have been thrown out with an entire haiku of its own as it was intended to erase their memory of the last week or so, which Chigusa considered too tangential from the purposes of her other ofuda (stop and delay; memory erasing is more proactive) to include it in the poem.

Due to their already existing contract, summoning her demons doesn't require more than invoking their names. She just likes talking.

Do note that in Japanese, most poetry is based off of the count of characters in the word rather than syllables as used in English haiku/tanka/etc—a vowel with a macron is two characters, and the "-n" also has its own character. As I'm bastardizing Japanese in with my English, I'm using both methods. Also, Japanese poetry, like their music, doesn't usually involve rhymes.

**Enki and Yuuki**: Enki, the bear, is Chigusa's Zenki; Yuuki, the monkey, is her Goki. The words "Zenki" and "Goki" reference a pair of demons that once assaulted the founder of Shugendō (basically a mash of Taoism, Buddhism, Shinto, and older shamanism into one religion), En no Gyōja. He instead taught them and they abandoned their previous names for these, representing that they walked in front of and behind him (protection and obedience). They and their 3 children have a lot of different roles in Japanese symbolism.

A ritual of the Ainu people (the original natives of Japan) serves to release a god trapped in the flesh of the bear to let it go back to the realm of the gods. They raise a bear cub as though a god in their household, and after 2-3 years they take it outside and shoot it full of arrows. Then they cook and eat it to send the god on its way. Hence Enki's arrows—they aren't actually a normal part of his summoning and exist solely while in Mundus Vetus. These are intended to allow it to attack creatures that a dangerous to attack.

The monkey shikigami coming from Yuuki's fur is a reference to Son Goku (Japanese Son Wukong), would could make monkeys out of his hair (which is frankly the least impressive thing his hairs could do, but Yuuki isn't even near that sort of power).

**Sutra**: In Buddhism (which uses the word differently than Hinduism does), a sutra is one of the records of the discourses of Guatama Buddha or one of his disciples, which serves as a part of what we would call the "scriptures" of Buddhism, although that isn't entirely accurate. Apart from these, a number of texts which aren't actually sutra are labeled as sutra anyways. A fair portion of traditional Japanese magic is based on reciting segments of these sutra or lifting passages from one of the other mythic texts from Japan. Although the segment itself doesn't always directly apply to the situation, reinterpretation is an important part of the spell process; as this is somewhat lengthy, it provides an additional reason to put sutras into writing.

**Gothic Lolita**: Tsukuyomi actually goes for the Sweet Lolita/AmaLoli look, but Setsuna doesn't actually know much about lolita fashion. It should be noted that Tsukuyomi is just really creepy, and Setsuna's thoughts here do not reflect either her nor my own opinion of lolita fashion in general.

In short, as you doubtless already know plenty about it, lolita fashion focuses on looking cute, elegant, innocent, and doll-like, but isn't actually intended to be sexualized (although it is often misunderstood and misportrayed as such—if you want _that_, you'd have to look into Ero Lolita). Despite the name, it doesn't have anything to do with lolicon… although I wonder why the hell they stuck with the name, in that case.

**Rubicante**: The name translates to "Red-Faced Terror" and he bears the title "He Who Grows Red". The meaning of this title will be shown in the next chapter (the others should be immediately obvious). He's got a more important role this time around than being Fate's idiotic familiar—and, he's a religious fanatic! The thing with sealing gods away—even demon gods—is that they have an unfortunate tendency to have followers.

**Malebranche**: The Malebranche originate from Dante's _Inferno_ and are a force of 12 powerful demons who guard the eighth layer of Hell, Malebolge. This is not their role in this story, but they are all dukes of realms within the Primordial World.

**Mundus Prīmigenius**: Just as Mundus Magicus is the Magic World and Mundus Vetus is the Old World, the realm of demons possesses a name of its own, chosen by its denizens. It isn't its real name, but no human would ever be able to pronounce _that_—even most demons would be unable to. Mundus Prīmigenius is means thus: the Primordial World.

**Cathedra**: The root Latin word from which "cathedral" evolved, it means "throne". Cathedral was once an adjective (cathedral church), but has evolved into a noun. Cathedrals are named such because of the bishop's cathedra inside. Chairs were once associated with teachers, and a bishop is supposed to teach his people about the faith. It's rather ironic that the Destroyer of Thrones has a throne of his own, isn't it?

_**Kyōraku Daimonji-yaki**__:_ "Daimonji-yaki" means "burning of the character 'large'" (**大**). During the Obon festival (or just Bon, as you prefer), a festival for the deceased, people in Kyoto set up huge bonfires in the mountains, signifying the time when the spirits of the visiting dead leave the land of the living (these fires are called "Okuribi", or "send-off fire"). The bonfires form three kanji and two shapes, the first-lit and most famous of which is the Daimonji (the name of **大**, and also the first kanji in the word Daimonji). Some of you may be more familiar with the final part of the festival, where everyone sets floating lanterns ron the river.

This symbolic connection to death makes the magical fire Chigusa almost caught Setsuna in especially lethal, and even if she had suffered only minor burns she would have been in severe risk of dying. If I haven't made it clear yet, Chigusa is sort of a bitch.

One of the meanings of "Kyōraku" is "capital", referring more specifically to Kyoto itself as the former capital of Japan.

_**Zankūsen**_: "Air-Splitting Flash" or "Sundering Air Flash" are a couple different translations for it (although I'm thinking of the first). It lets the user cut through the air, forming a space behind the blade that is physically a vacuum, although formed and filled with chi, that they launch with the swing of their weapon. Going by variations in name and method, such sword-waves are common within weapon-using, chi-awakened martial arts.

_**Mea virga (redde)! **_

"_My staff!_" ("_Return, my staff!_")

A simple spell to bring one's wand or staff back to hand. Because of the connection a mage forms with their casting device, they don't need to have it in hand to use this spell. Because of the seal Chigusa put over his staff the normal spell wasn't enough to bring it back, so he used raw force. It was overkill, to be honest.

_**Sīs mea pars per centum octōgintā secundās! Ministra Negiī, Cagurazaka Asuna!**_

"_You are a part of me for 180 seconds! The Ministra of Negi, Kagurazaka Asuna!)_"

In the previous chapter I discussed the twinned spirits that attach themselves to each half of a Pactio; this is where the resonance between them comes into play. The magister pours magic into the spirit (there are actually two, but they are identical enough that they can be treated as a single individual in multiple bodies… although "individual" is a human concept that doesn't apply to many spirits), where it is stored in a "pool" of magic; the incantation serves as the instructions on what to do with that magic. In the canon Negi vs. Kotaro fight, he just pulled the magic back in after telling it what to do—it isn't a very effective way to go about it, but he didn't know any battle enhancement spells. If there is no magic stored there, either side can tug it straight out of the other partner via the pact-spirit; although considering that the ministra is usually a melee combatant, few magisters ever need to draw on their companion's magic.

_**Flet ūnā vente, Flāns Saltātiō Pulverea! **_

"_The winds flow together, Windswept Dust Dance!_"

The caster creates a single, powerful burst of wind designed to snatch up objects in its path and use their mass for a stronger impact. It normally wouldn't be strong enough to crush a fire of that size (although the sudden force is enough to extinguish lesser flames), but Negi casts it at a level above what an ordinary mage could manage—he even left Setsuna and Asuna unmoved, despite being between him and the fire.

_**Flāns exarmātiō!**_

"_Wind Flower, disarm weapon!_"

The wind variant of one of the two offensive spells mandatory in every school of magic. Despite the force necessary to disarm someone and destroy clothing, the Exarmātiō line of spells are designed with an inherent limitation against causing direct harm to living beings (which is why someone can be blasted with fire, for instance, and not be harmed). Being the first offensive magic taught at the Meldiana Magic Academy, Negi put an extraordinary amount of effort into learning the spell, which combined with a strong natural affinity for wind magic has made the spell second nature to him—so much so that he personalized it to add the dissolves-into-flower petals bit instead of just ripping the clothing off. But he had a cold at the time, and ended making a subconscious connection between the spell and sneezing via Pavlovian conditioning. Although he trained himself out of sneezing when he casts it, he hasn't managed to do so for the reverse.

Ever notice that Negi still disarms people with wind, even after his heavily specializion in lightning magic? This is my explanation for why. Also, this spell is an amazing example of why you should never translate literally. "Blowing disarming" is its literal definition. There is no word for "wind flower" in Latin, although the Greek "anemone" comes close (daughter of the wind) and the flower is sometimes called the windflower. So is a sea anemone is a waterwindflower? I suppose the water currents could take the place of air currents...

_**Shinmei-ryū Secret Technique: Nitou Zanchikakuken**_: "Dual Sword Core Cleaving Sword." And by "core", I mean "planet core". "Chikaku" actually means both the earth's core _and_ the earth's crust, depending on the kanji used. So you could call this "Dual Sword World Splitting Blade" and still be right. The user envelops her blades in chi, making their blows sharper, have more force, and the chi extends outwards from the physical blade to give the weapon more reach, as well. The planet-cleaving bit refers to this increased range of attack. And a good metaphor can make "planet core" stand in for the core of just about anything.

_**Shinmei-ryū Ukigumo: Nyūdōgumo Kara Rakka**_: "Shinmei School Floating Cloud: Falling Petals from a Thunderhead." This unarmed technique is designed to take advantage of a skilled opponent's ability to block or deflect her attacks. Although each strike aims to strike, the user uses the defensive action to keep up the spinning motion with relatively little loss of speed. Of course, the right type of deflection, bad positioning, or an enemy that dodges the attack can all make the technique a failure. The successful execution of this technique permits the user to redirect their momentum into a number of different forms of attack.

_**Sagitta Magica**_

Ah, yes. The trusty Magic Archer has finally made its appearance! I'll explain the spells as a whole and list the actual translations below. The Magic Archer is the other of the two universally taught offensive spells. The magical components of the spell are almost identical regardless of the specific effects of the element or variations in the incantation. As such, it is extremely versatile and a mage with limited knowledge of an element can still pull off some low-tier Magic Archers. It utilizes the symbolic power of prime numbers to gather weak elemental spirits to produce an "arrow" that the magic can give limited guidance to; these can be fired all at once, in a series, or together as a single large projectile better compared to a ballista bolt. Of the elements seen so far, we have Light (possessed of a great deal of raw destructive power, which the wielder can tone down without modifying the spell), Wind (capable of binding; can also be used to increase the knockback of the spell), and Lightning (electricity—speaks for itself)

Interestingly, the word for "arrow" isn't actually in the incantation; however, Latin is a null-subject language (meaning the subject can sometimes be omitted if you know what it is anyways—Japanese is the same) so in transliterating it to English it works more smoothly to include it in the sentence.

Light and wind magic come most naturally to Negi, which is why he can use the shorter incantation with them (wind was forced to be extended because he was using a plain wand, not his staff).

_**Ūndecim spīritūs āeriālēs, vinculum factī inimīcum captent! Sagitta Magica, Āēr Captūrae!**_

"_11 spirits of wind, become a chain and capture my enemy! Magic Archer, Binding Wind Arrows!_"

_**Septendecim**_ _**spīritūs**_ _**lūcis; Sagitta Magica, Seriēs Lūcis!**_

"_17 spirits of light; Magic Archer, Barrage of Seventeen Light Arrows!_"

_**Trēsvīgintī spīritūs fulgurālēs, fulgurantia per caelī inimīcum īnflīgentēs! Sagitta Magica, Seriēs Fulgurālis!**_

"_23 spirits of lightning, flash through the sky and strike my enemy! Sagitta Magica, Barrage of 23 Lightning Arrows!_"

_**Shinmei-ryū Secret Technique: Zandaigumoken**_: "Great Cloud Fissure Sword." This is another spinning attack, although requiring a blade. Unlike the Nyūdōgumo Kara Rakka, the Zandaigumoken isn't supposed to be a series of attacks; with a little bit of distance between themselves and the enemy, a follower of Shinmei jumps into a spin, holding their sword close to them to reduce air friction and have a tighter, more controlled spin; at the conclusion they extend their sword to strike with a great deal of force—it helps that many use their chi to complete the spin faster.


End file.
